‘That’s the idea: it is right there,’ said Miss McCabe. ‘But old man Barnum was not scientific. He saw what our people wanted, but he did not see,
Pappa said, how to educate them through their natural instincts. Barnum’s mermaid was not genuine business. It confused the popular mind, and fostered superstition—and got found out. The result was scepticism, both religious and scientific. Now, Pappa used to argue, the lives of our citizens are monotonous. They see yellow dogs, say, but each yellow dog has only one tail. They see men and women, but almost all of them have only one head: and even a hand with six fingers is not common. This is why the popular mind runs into grooves. This causes what they call “the dead level of democracy.” Even our men of genius, Pappa allowed (for he was a very fair-minded man), do not go ahead of the European ticket, but rather the reverse. Your Tennyson has the inner tracks of our Longfellow: your Thackeray gives our Bertha Runkle his dust. The papers called Pappa unpatriotic, and a bad American. But he was not: he was a white man. When he saw his country’s faults he put his finger on them, right there, and tried to cure them.’
‘A noble policy,’ murmured Merton.
Miss McCabe was really so pretty and unusual, that he did not care how long she was in coming to the point.
‘Well, Pappa argued that there was more genius, or had been since the Declaration of Independence, even in England, than in the States. “And why?” he asked. “Why, because they have more variety in England. Things are not all on one level there—”’
‘Our dogs have only one tail apiece,’ said Merton, ‘in spite of the proverb “as proud as a dog with two
tails,” and a plurality of heads is unusual even among British subjects.’
‘Yes,’ answered Miss McCabe, ‘but you have varieties among yourselves. You have a King and a Queen; and your peerage is rich in differentiated species. A Baronet is not a Marquis, nor is a Duke an Earl.’
‘He may be both,’ said Merton, but Miss McCabe continued to expose the parental philosophy.
‘Now Pappa would not hear of aristocratic distinctions in our country. He was a Hail Columbia man, on the Democratic ticket. But something is wanted, he said, to get us out of grooves, and break the monotony. That something, said Pappa, Nature has mercifully provided in Freaks. The citizens feel this, unconsciously: that’s why they spend their money at Barnum’s. But Barnum was not scientific, and Barnum was not straight about his mermaid. So Pappa founded his Museum of Natural Varieties, all of them honest Injun. Here the lecturers show off the freaks, and explain how Nature works them, and how she can always see them and go one better. We have the biggest gold nugget and the weeniest cunning least gold nugget; the biggest diamond and the smallest diamond; the tallest man and the smallest man; the whitest negro and the yellowest red man in the world. We have the most eccentric beasts, and the queerest fishes, and everything is explained by lecturers of world-wide reputation, on the principles of evolution, as copyrighted by our Asa Gray and our Agassiz. That is what Pappa called popular education, and it hits our citizens right where they live.’