CHAPTER IV. TRYING MANY VENTURES.
VISIT TO PITTSBURG—SUCCESSFUL LOTTERY BUSINESS—MARRIAGE—FIRST EDITORIAL VENTURE—LIBEL SUIT, IMPRISONMENT AND LIBERATION—REMOVAL TO NEW YORK—HARD TIMES—KEEPING A BOARDING-HOUSE.
About this time Barnum, with a Mr. Samuel Sherwood, of Bridgeport, started for Pittsburg, where they proposed to open a lottery office. On reaching New York, however, and talking over the scheme with friends, the venture was abandoned and the two men took, instead, a pleasure trip to Philadelphia. They stayed a week, at the end of which time they returned to New York, with exactly twenty-seven cents between them. Sherwood managed to borrow two dollars—enough to take him to Newark, where he had a cousin, who obligingly loaned him fifty dollars. The two friends remained in New York on the strength of their newly acquired wealth for several days, and then went home considerably richer in experience at least.
Barnum now went into the lottery business exclusively, taking his uncle, Alanson Taylor, into partnership. They established a number of agencies throughout the country, and made good profits from the sale of tickets. Several of the tickets sold by them took prizes and their office came to be considered "lucky."
The young man was prospering also in another direction. The fair tailoress smiled on him as sweetly as ever, and in the summer of 1827 they became formally engaged. In the fall Miss Hallett went "on a visit" to her uncle, Nathan Beers, in New York. A month later her lover followed, "to buy goods," and on the 8th of November, 1829, there was a wedding in the comfortable house at No. 3 Allen street. Having married at the age of nineteen, Barnum always expressed his disapproval of early marriages, although his own was a very happy one.
Returning to Bethel, Mr. and Mrs. Barnum, after boarding for a few months, moved into their own house, which was built on a three acre plat purchased from the grandfather.
The lottery business still prospered, but it was mostly in the hands of agents, in Danbury, Norwalk, Stamford and Middletown, and Barnum began to look around for some field for his individual energies. He tried travelling as a book auctioneer, but found it uncongenial and quit the business. In July, 1831, with his uncle Alanson Taylor, he opened a grocery and general store, but the venture was not particularly successful, and in the fall the partnership was dissolved, Barnum buying his uncle's interest.
The next enterprise was an important one, it being the real beginning of Phineas T. Barnum's public career.
In a period of strong political excitement, he wrote several communications for the Danbury weekly paper, setting forth what he conceived to be the dangers of a sectarian interference which was then apparent in political affairs. The publication of these communications was refused, and he accordingly purchased a press and types, and October 19, 1831, issued the first number of his own paper, The Herald of Freedom.
"I entered upon the editorship of this journal," says Mr. Barnum, "with all the vigor and vehemence of youth. The boldness with which the paper was conducted soon excited widespread attention and commanded a circulation which extended beyond the immediate locality into nearly every State in the Union. But lacking that experience which induces caution, and without the dread of consequences, I frequently laid myself open to the charge of libel, and three times in three years I was prosecuted. A Danbury butcher, a zealous politician, brought a civil suit against me for accusing him of being a spy in a Democratic caucus. On the first trial the jury did not agree, but after a second trial I was fined several hundred dollars. Another libel suit against me was withdrawn. The third was sufficiently important to warrant the following detail: