"Mr. Barnum, I suppose you are going to give me this new hunting-dress."
"Oh, no," Barnum replied, "I got that for your successor, who will exhibit the bears to-morrow, besides, you have no possible use for it."
"Now, don't be mean, but lend me the dress, if you won't give it to me, for I want to wear it home to my native village."
Barnum could not refuse the poor old man anything, and he therefore replied:
"Well, Adams, I will lend you the dress, but you will send it back to me?"
"Yes, when I have done with it," he replied, with an evident chuckle of triumph.
Barnum thought, "he will soon be done with it," and replied:
"That's all right."
A new idea evidently struck Adams, for, with a brightening look of satisfaction, he said:
"Now, Barnum, you have made a good thing out of the California menagerie, and so have I; but you will make a heap more. So if you won't give me this new hunter's dress, just draw a little writing, and sign it, saying that I may wear it until I have done with it."
Barnum knew that in a few days, at longest, he would be "done" with this world altogether, and, to gratify him, he cheerfully drew and signed the paper.