Not content with one week's show of the fowls, Barnum proposed that it should be continued for six days longer; and the crowd continued to visit this exhibition for another week, and to pour in with their friends, their wives, their children, and their quarters, to the great edification and satisfaction of the proprietor of the show, and the "President" of the "National Poultry Society."
I was there, with a goodly quantity of my "rare" and "unexceptionable" and "pure-bred" fowls, which were greatly admired by the thousands of lookers-on, who flocked to this extraordinary exhibition. It was really astonishing (to me, at least) what very fine birds I had at this show.
And, "may be," fowls didn't sell there! If I remember rightly, "the people" were round, on that occasion. And so was I!
CHAPTER XXIX.
FIRST "NATIONAL" POULTRY-SHOW IN NEW YORK.
Whether it was because Barnum had taken this enterprise in hand, whether it was because it was known that my "superior" stock was to be seen at the Museum, or whether it was because the intrepid "Fanny Fern" had promised to visit the show, I cannot say; but one thing was certain,—such a gathering of "the people" was seldom witnessed, even in busy, driving, sight-seeing New York, as that which crowded the great rooms of Barnum's establishment on the occasion of the first exhibition of the so-called "National Poultry Society."
"All the world" was there, with his wife and babies, and nieces and nephews. The belle and the beau, the merchant and the mechanic, the lawyer and the parson, the rich and the poor, old and young, grave and gay,—all were in attendance upon this extraordinary display of cockadoodledom; and Barnum—the indefatigable, the enterprising, the determined, the incomparable Barnum—was in his glory, as the quarters were piled up at the counter of the ticket-office, and "the people" wedged their way up the crowded stairs and aisles of his Museum.
The great show-man was as busy as His Satanic Majesty is vulgarly supposed to be in a snow-storm! Now here, now there; up stairs, down stairs; in the halls, in the lobbies; busy with John, button-holing the "committees," from morning till night. All smiles, all good-nature, all exertion to please the throngs of visitors who constantly jammed their way about the building. And, to say that everything about this undertaking (so far as he was personally concerned) was not managed with tact and good judgment, as well as complete propriety and liberality, would be to state what was untrue. Mr. Barnum rarely does anything by halves; and to him, in this instance, belongs the credit of getting up, and carrying through successfully, the very best show of poultry ever seen in America,—beyond all comparison.
In due season I selected from my then somewhat reduced stock sixty specimens of the Shanghae tribe of fowls, which, with some twenty samples of choice Madagascar Rabbits, I forwarded (in charge of my own agent) to this long-talked-of show.