Chapter LIV: Appendix: Rest Only Found in Action (2)

One of the greatest successes ever achieved in the annals of the
sawdust ring has been accomplished the present season by P. T.
Barnum’s Museum, Menagerie and Circus. From the inception of the
enterprise success has crowned its efforts. Mr. Barnum’s name in
itself has been a tower of strength, and to his direction and
general control its success is due. There are few men that have the
courage to invest nearly $500,000 in so precarious a business, and
to run it at a daily expense of nearly $2,500. But Mr. Barnum had
faith that the public would respond liberally to his appeal. One
great secret of his success has been ever to give the public a
great deal for their money, and to fix the prices of admission at
popular rates. But we doubt if he expected so great a success as
has recently, in the State of Maine, been showered upon him. It is
worthy of being recorded as equal to Jenny Lind’s triumphal
American tour. It had originally been the intention to make a tour
with the great show as far east as Bangor, Me., and it was so
announced, but subsequently they found that there were many bridges
over which it was impossible for the large chariots to pass, and
that the show would be obliged to make stands at several small
towns en route which could not possibly pay the running expenses
even if every inhabitant attended, consequently it was decided that
Lewiston, Me., should be the terminus of their eastern tour. The
following letter, dated Winthrop, Me., July 30, from a
correspondent, will best convey the idea of the great interest and
enthusiasm there manifested by the people:

“The business in Maine has been immense, contrary to the
predictions of showmen generally. Since entering the State, except
at Brunswick, where it rained hard all day, they have been
compelled to show three times daily to accommodate the vast crowds
that flocked from every direction. While exhibiting at Gardiner and
Augusta persons came all the way from Bangor. When they reached
Waterville, a scene occurred which has never been equaled in this
or any other country. The village was crowded with people who had
come from the surrounding country, many of them travelling a
distance of seventy-five miles, and all the morning crowds were
pouring in from all points of the compass in carriages, wagons,
ox-carts, and on foot. Near the circus tents, in an adjoining
field, were several large tents pitched, which had served to
shelter the people the previous night who had come long distances
and encamped there. The authorities of the village had taken the
precaution to stop the sale of all spiritous liquors during that
day, and had caused barrels of water and plenty of ice to be placed
at the street corners, for the free use of all. Carts were provided
at the expense of the village to constantly replenish the barrels.
The early morning performance was commenced and it was found that
they could not accommodate a tithe part of their patrons, and ere
its close an excursion train of twenty-seven cars, crowded in every
part, came in from Bangor, closely followed by another of seventeen
cars from Belfast. Seeing this vast accession to the already large
numbers of visitors, the manager was somewhat puzzled how to
accommodate them. Finally, it was decided to give a continuous
exhibition, giving an act in the circus department every few
moments. This style of performance was kept up without cessation
until nine o’clock in the evening, when a heavy shower of rain
falling, afforded the manager an excuse to close the exhibitions.
The men and horses were completely exhausted, and their next drive
being forty-eight miles to Lewiston, where they were to exhibit
three times, they shipped all the ring horses by railroad, to give
them an opportunity for much needed rest. On driving out of
Augusta, on July 29, they narrowly escaped an accident similar to
the one which happened in New Jersey. One of the passenger wagons,
with twelve passengers and having four horses attached, had driven
down a steep hill, when suddenly they came upon a locomotive
crossing the road immediately in front of them. The driver, with
great presence of mind, suddenly pulled the horses to the right,
making an abrupt turn, which overturned the wagon, breaking the arm
of Mr. Summerfield, one of the business men, bruising several
others, and injuring somewhat severely Josephe, the French giant,
who was compelled to remain behind the show for a couple of days.”

From Maine we went across Vermont, exhibiting in the more important places, to Albany and Troy. At Albany it was impossible to secure a suitable locality for the exhibition short of a distance of two miles from the city; yet here distance seemed literally to “lend enchantment to the view,” for every exhibition was thronged, and here as everywhere, thousands were turned away who were unable to find room.

Our route from Albany was along the line of the New York Central Railroad to Buffalo, and back by the Erie Railway to the Hudson River, exhibiting nearly everywhere, and after exhibitions at Catskill, Poughkeepsie and Newburg, returning to New York. Our tour through the country was more than a carnival--it was a perfect ovation; and best of all, the public and the press, with one accord, pronounced the exhibition even better and greater than I had advertised.

At the close of the travelling season I desired to exhibit my great show to my New York patrons, and to return again to the metropolis where, in days gone by, the children, the parents, and the grandparents of the present generation have flocked in millions to my museum. Accordingly I secured the Empire Rink immediately after the close of the American Institute Fair, and opened in that building November 13, 1871. At least ten thousand people were present, and in response to an enthusiastic welcoming call, I made a few remarks, the report of which I copy from the next morning’s New York _World_:

“A popular Eastern poet has said the noblest art a human being can
acquire is the power of giving happiness to others. I sincerely
hope this is true, for my highest ambition during the last thirty
years has been to make the public happy. When I introduced the
Swedish nightingale, Jenny Lind, to the American public in 1851, a
thrill of pleasure was felt throughout the land by our most refined
and intellectual citizens, as well as by every lover of melody in
the humblest walks of life. As a museum proprietor for nearly
thirty years I catered successfully to the pleasures of many
millions of persons. Nor have my efforts been confined to this
continent. As a public exhibitor I have appeared before kings,
queens and emperors in the Old World, and have given gratification
to many millions of their devoted subjects. Fifty years ago some
moralists taught that it was wicked to laugh, but all divines of
the present day have abandoned that untenable and austere position,
and now almost universally agree that laughter is not only
conducive to health, but very proper and to be encouraged, for, as
the bard of Avon justly says: ‘With mirth and laughter let old
wrinkles come.’ In fact, Mr. Beecher permits laughing in his
church, holding that it is as right to laugh as to cry. It has been
said that I have caused more people to laugh than any other man on
this continent. Ten years ago one of our first families in Fifth
avenue were conversing regarding the duties, responsibilities, and
trials of this life. Their little daughter of seven was present.
The father remarked that it was a pretty hard world to live
in--full of struggles, labors, toils and disappointments. The
mother added that there was much poverty and suffering in the
world, etc., but the little girl chirped in, ‘Well, I think it is a
beautiful and pleasant world. I have my dear mamma and papa, and my
good grandma there, besides I have Barnum’s Museum to go to, and
surely I don’t want a happier world than this.’ My great object has
been to elevate the standard of amusements, to render them
instructive as well as amusing, to divest them of all vulgar and
immoral tendencies, and to make all my exhibitions worthy the
patronage of the best and most respectable families. Finally, my
great desire has been to give my patrons ten times the worth of
their money, and in this my last crowning effort to overshadow and
totally eclipse all other exhibitions in the world.”

And the metropolitan press, people and patronage combined, only repeated with more emphasis, the universal testimony of the country as to the extent and merits of this great show. Want of space permits me to copy only two or three of the favorable articles which appeared from day to day during the entire exhibition in the columns of the New York press. The following is from the Baptist _Union_:

RARE CURIOSITIES.

Mr. P. T. Barnum has organized at the Empire Rink a very large
exhibition, combining a Museum, Menagarie, International Zoölogical
Garden, Polytechnic Institute and Hippodrome. Having examined the
various departments of this vast combination, we do not hesitate to
recommend our friends to go with their families to visit it, and
they will enjoy a treat seldom offered in a lifetime. The
department of natural history is especially excellent and
interesting, and embraces the largest and rarest collection of wild
animals ever exhibited together in this or probably in any other
country. Everything connected with the entertainments admirably
harmonizes with the good taste and respectability which give to all
of Mr. Barnum’s enterprises a refinement and morality which commend
them to the most scrupulous. The great Hippodrome Pageant, in which
appear so many elephants, camels, dromedaries, horses and ponies,
with men, women and children in costumes representing the Arabs and
Bedouins of the desert, Roman knights, heralds, warriors, kings,
princes and bashaws of the olden time, is truly interesting and
grand, and is worth going a long distance to see.

That popular religious journal, the New York _Christian Leader_, edited by the Rev. G. H. Emerson, speaks as follows:

A GOOD SERMON FOR SHOWMEN.

The success which everywhere attends Barnum’s great show ought to
be evidence to the managers who furnish amusement to the public
that profanity and indecency of speech and gesture--all of which
Mr. Barnum excludes by promptly and indignantly discharging the
offender--are not of the nature of supply meeting a popular demand.
If a man is coarse and vulgar himself, he usually has manhood
enough left not to take his wife and children where coarseness and
vulgarity are sure to be witnessed. Mr. Barnum’s combination is now
doing for canvas what his Jenny Lind enterprise did for public
halls. Its patrons are not individuals, but communities. For
example, the factories of Paterson, N. J., were compelled to
suspend, the operative population having left, _en masse_ for the
show. But this swimming and unsurpassed success would come to a
full stop in one day if profanity and indecency, instead of being
rigorously forbidden, were encouraged. The community at large
respects decency. The show, bewildering, various and mammoth beyond
a precedent, is now on its way through New England, in one sense,
like “Sherman’s march to the sea,” and a patronage never before
anticipated is organized in advance. It is big, and, better still,
it is clean--clean to the eye and to the moral sense.

“Nym Crinkle,” the Dramatic Critic of the New York _World_, wrote a very entertaining column about the show for that journal, and “Trinculo” copied it in full in the “Amusements Gossip” of the New York _Leader_. The following is extracted from the article:

BARNUM’S UNIVERSAL SHOW.

Barnum, who long ago beat all creation, is now exhibiting his
spoils at the Rink. Animated nature and animated art make a
stunning combination, especially when the combination is all in
active operation, as it generally is about two o clock in the
afternoon and eight o’clock in the evening. Then one can enjoy the
howls of the animals, the rush and scurry of the arena, the
rattlebang of the band, and the delight of ten thousand people,
without stopping to discriminate. It is something for the veteran
showman to say he has been able to stir the metropolis with his
caravan as other and less indifferent villages are stirred by
smaller shows. The combination, as shows are rated, is really an
extraordinary one, and when it arrives at an average Western city
it doubles the population for them, contributing of its own
multitudinous teamsters, tricksters, and stirrers-up about three
hundred people, with as many more ravening beasts thrown in.

The first living curiosity that one meets at the Rink is Barnum
himself uncaged. He still holds to the notion that it is worth
fifty cents to look at him, and one dollar to read his life; and as
nearly everybody has looked at him and read his life, we presume
the rest of the world agrees with him. Still it is curious to
observe how the healthy and hearty world, thronging to see the
monkeys and the mermaids, mingle awe with their admiration of the
greatest curiosity of all. They are subdued by a sense of the
showman’s power. They skirt carefully round the edges of his
greatness, so as not to attract too much of his attention, for who
could tell at what moment, if he so chose, he would exhibit them.
We say the healthy and hearty world, for of course the unhealthy
and deformed world, which we all know was made to be exhibited,
throngs as of old in supplicating procession after him.
Three-legged women and four-legged men, and double-headed children
may be seen at all hours congregating on the Third avenue in the
vicinity of the Rink, seeking audience of the great showman.
Indeed, the observant traveller on this great thoroughfare will
know, hours before he gets to the Rink, that he is approaching
Barnum, by the strange monstrosities, woolly horses, Albino
children, and living skeletons that will be observed wending their
way from all parts of the world to the great show in hope of
getting engagements. Of course, all this adds to the excitement and
interest of the eager multitude. But the animals and curiosities
inside constitute the real attraction to the public; and a very
fine collection of animals it is. The eight or ten royal Abyssinian
and Babylonian lions roar less like sucking doves than any that
have had their jaws stretched among us since Van Amburgh’s time. As
for the rhinoceros, he deserves especial attention, because, as the
card on his cage informs us, he is the unicorn of Scripture. But he
doesn’t look a bit like the agile fellow that fought for the crown
on his hind legs, (ah, he was an artist,) for he eats too much hay,
and nothing can be more absurd and contrary to the revolutionary
character of the unicorn dear to heraldry than this iron-clad
monster eating hay with the demureness of a cow. Still there is
danger in his cage, the keeper informs us, and he ought to know,
for he probably lived there at some time with him in order to find
him out. And he further assures us that the reason Mr. Barnum
employs him to take care of the beast is that he is an old sailor,
nobody else being able to go round his horn. Time, however would
not suffice to relate the wonders of the yak and guayga and the
wart hog, none of which are popular pets, nor to tell of the
infinite variety of the feline tribe, from _felis leo_ himself to
the tiniest cougar. This collection of animals makes what is called
the Zoölogical Garden, a distinct apartment of the show. There is a
collection of camels--about forty--and several elephants, eating
peanuts with singularly disproportioned taste, at the east end, and
here, we observe, is the menagerie. The camels, each with his hump
tastefully covered with a camel’s hair shawl, wait with meek
patience for the ring-master to call them, and they all slide out
on their cushioned feet like dusty spectres. It would be well to
visit the collection of wild animals after this, and then inspect
the exhibition of animated nature, reserving the caravan till the
last. But the conscientious visitor has the hippodrome, the
hippotheatron, the circus, the arena and the ring to inspect, and
unless he hurries up, he will not get through in time. We have
found it in our experience that the best plan is to cut the arena,
the hippodrome, and the hippotheatron, and stick to the circus. The
circus will be found worthy of the carefulest study. It will be
found to have a largeness that is new, and certainly it would be
difficult to find more performers or have them do more. The Rink,
thanks to Barnum, is a popular resort. We forget how many miles of
promenade there are through the zoölogical department of the
menagerie, but we know that thousands of people may be seen there
of a pleasant afternoon, adding a biological interest to the
zoölogical exhibit that is well worth noting.

The following is from the New York _Daily Standard_ of Dec. 28, 1871:

UNBOUNDED ENTERPRISE.

Mr. P. T. Barnum is the only man in the show-business who
thoroughly comprehends the demands of the public, and is willing to
satisfy them at any expenditure of time and means. His projects are
conceived on a gigantic scale, very far in advance of the
conservatism so characteristic of even liberal managers. His
expensive expeditions to Labrador, some years ago, to capture white
whales for the American Museum, and another expedition to South
Africa, in 1859, which secured the first and only living
hippopotamus ever seen on this continent, involved an outlay
sufficient to organize and completely furnish a first-class show. A
third even more hazardous expedition was sent to the North Pacific
to capture seals, sea lions, and other marine monsters, which were
transported thousands of miles in immense water tanks. These are
but a few in many instances of that large and comprehensive
liberality that distinguishes all of Mr. Barnum’s enterprises, and
is the source of his managerial triumphs and the foundation of his
financial success. Obstacles, that to others seem insurmountable,
only spur him on to greater effort. No article of real novelty or
merit which will enhance the attractions of his exhibitions is
suffered to escape for lack of energy, or for want of liberal
expenditure of money. It is this spirit that has enabled Mr. Barnum
to combine in one exhibition the most complete and colossal
collection of animate and inanimate curiosities ever assembled in
the world.

In the spring of 1871, when the great show was about to enter upon
its first campaign, complete as it seemed to the manager and to
other experts, Mr. Barnum thought a most valuable feature might be
added. He telegraphed to the whaling ports of New England, and sent
messages to San Francisco and Alaska, to know if a group of sea
lions and other specimens of the phocine tribe could be secured.
Finally, through his agents in San Francisco, he organized an
expedition to Alaska. By the first of July, several fine specimens
of seals and sea lions, some of the latter weighing more than 1,000
pounds each, were brought in tanks over the Union Pacific Railway,
were safely landed at Bridgeport, and, thereafter, were forwarded
to the show, then on its travels through New England. As these
delicate animals are likely to die, arrangements have been made to
keep good the supply, and December 16, 1871, Mr. Barnum received a
telegram from San Francisco that six more sea lions had just
arrived at that port for him. Two of these will be sent, by
arrangement, to the Zoölogical Gardens, in Regent’s Park, London,
and the rest, with several seals captured in the same expedition,
will be added to Barnum’s show next spring.

Mr. Barnum’s active and enterprising agents are in Europe, Asia,
Africa, South America, and elsewhere in the world, wherever
anything rare and valuable--bird, beast, reptile, or other animate
or inanimate curiosity--can be secured, which will add to the
interest of the exhibition. In the menagerie, and the hippodrome
also, experts are constantly engaged in training elephants, camels,
performing horses, and other animals, and are thus preparing new
and attractive features, some of which will be as novel to the show
profession as they will be new and attractive to the public.

I might fill hundreds of pages with the notices of the New York papers during the protracted exhibition at the Empire Rink. Every day, almost, the journals had something new to say about the show, from the simple fact that nearly every day the addition of some new animal or attraction, or fresh features in the ring performances compelled new notices. The exhibition continued with unabated success and patronage till after the holidays, when necessary preparations for the spring campaign, including the repainting of all the wagons, compelled me to close.

I must make mention merely of two genuine curiosities from California--the one a section of one of the big trees, and the other a bright young Digger Indian, who was my guide through the Yosemite Valley. I little thought when I saw the big trees that I should soon secure for exhibition in New York a gigantic section of one of them, with the bark, which, set up as it enclosed the tree, enclosed, on one occasion, at the Empire Rink, two hundred children from the Howard Mission. The Digger was equally a curiosity in his way. One day when the baboon escaped from his cage, and defied all the efforts of the keepers to capture him, my Digger Indian lassooed him, and brought him down with a run and a rope in less than no time. His services in, and with, this “line” on other occasions were more memorable.

I cannot close this additional narrative without warning my readers, and the public generally, that the enormous success of my great combination has stimulated unscrupulous smaller showmen to feeble imitations, which, in some instances, are, and are intended to be, downright frauds upon the public. Nearly every circus and menagerie in the country has lately added what is called a “museum,” and in some cases they have employed a man named, or supposed to be named, Barnum, intending to advertise under the title of “Barnum’s Show,” thereby deceiving and swindling the public. The trick is very transparent, and can be successful, if at all, only in very rural regions, where the newspapers fail to penetrate. The so-called “Museums” may embrace a stuffed animal or two, and a small show of wax-works. Indeed, some of these minor managers have bought cast-off curiosities from me, and cheap rubbish from old museums, with which to set up the “new features” in their circuses or menageries. The whole public knows that there is but one P. T. Barnum, and but one show in the country of sufficient importance to bear his name. I trust to my name and my long-worked-for and well-earned reputation to insure the public against imposition from the attempts of my imitators, who are as unprincipled as they will be unsuccessful in their efforts to defraud me and to delude the public.