"At once the querist started in the direction named. He got very near Mr. Barnum and stood looking intently at him. Then he moved a little segment in the circle he was describing, and looked again. Several times he repeated these inspections, until he had from all points viewed the object of his curiosity and had completed the circle, when he started for the door, Mr. Greenwood watching him all the time. When he came near enough Mr. Greenwood said to him: 'My friend, you have not seen the Museum yet. There is a whale downstairs and any number of things up-stairs, a moral play soon to come off, etc.' 'I know it,' said the rustic, 'and I don't care. I've seen Barnum, and I've got my money's worth.'
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have not been able to bring to you the American Museum to-night, but I have done what is better—I have brought to you Mr. Barnum."
Mr. Barnum then arose, not in the least nonplussed, but greatly pleased with the packed house and the hearty cheers which greeted him:
"MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—I cannot, for the life of me, see why you should have sent so far as New York for me to come and address you. I am not really a lyceum lecturer at all. I am only a showman, and it seems you have a man here who can show up the showman."
The whole story may read very weakly in print; for Mr. Barnum's tones of voice, and gestures and mobility of feature are not communicable to cold type. But the playfulness of this unusual preface not only stirred the audience on a dismal night, but put the lecturer at his very best. Mr. Barnum's lecture was elastic. It might be shaped for an hour, as it was not fully written, or it might consume more time. On this occasion it was two hours and over. While the snow was still falling in open sleighs, that could find no shelter, their owners, not minding this, were enjoying one of the most delightful evenings of a whole winter—of many winters, perhaps.
And all this leads me to say that Mr. Barnum, while claiming no part of a professional lecturer's endowment, and only made oratory a casual—if it was sometimes a frequent—matter, was, nevertheless, admirably equipped to entertain an audience. He could tell a story inimitably. His mimetic faculty, like Gough's, gave him something of the quality of an actor, so that he illustrated well what he had to say. No lectures have proved much more instructive and entertaining than Mr. Barnum's on The Art of Money Getting; and, wherever he went to address an audience, he was sure to be called again.
When I met him in Bridgeport for the first time, I found he was easily the chief man of the place. He was living then at Lindencroft, on Fairfield Avenue. His Oriental palace, Iranistan, had burned down some years before. But, wherever he lived, his house gave open welcome to many guests, illustrious and other; and no one who had the good fortune to enter it, ever went away without connecting with his visit the happiest of memories. At the table he especially shone. Wit, repartee, and even puns, when occasion offered, coruscated over the meal, and diffused universal good humor. He had always at hand innumerable anecdotes, which he made peculiarly his own, and which he told with inimitable grace and unction. I am sure nobody will ever tell them again as he told them; for, contrary to the proverb, the prosperity of the jest in his case lay, nine-tenths, in his way of relating it—though it was never a dull one.
It mattered not what the business of the day might be, or what obstacles or discouragements had been encountered, his cheerfulness was perennial and unfailing. Mirth and good cheer were apparently inborn and organic with him. He could no more suppress them than a fountain could cease bubbling up, or a river turn backward in its course. And what men and women he has had, first and last, at his table; it is impossible to exhaust the list or exaggerate its quality. Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, E. H. Chapin, Bayard Taylor, Mark Twain, and the Cary sisters, were a few among Americans; and Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, George Augustus Sala, and I know not how many others, from abroad. No catalogue of them, but only types can be given here. He was almost never without people who made no claim to distinction; and to them, too, he was the genial, urbane, and entertaining host.
There was a depth of warm humanity in Mr. Barnum's inmost texture that his public fame does not fully disclose. That children liked him has been already often said; but those in maturer youth—young gentlemen and ladies—felt, somehow, that he never ceased, at any age, to be their contemporary. No younger and more hopeful thoughts were offered than his. If, as sometimes happened, when he organized, as he persistently did, the summer picnic, inland or on the coast, there was a party made for each direction, the struggle was to see which could capture Mr. Barnum. Which way the rest of us might go was not of so much consequence; but the party which lost him in behalf of the other, felt like one trying to enjoy Hamlet with the chief character missing.
At one time he actually kept a seaside caterer at a distant beach to receive his guests of twenty or more on a place of his own, whenever, on summer days, he could collect guests enough and give them attention. It was only necessary to send word in the morning, and the tables were ready, and the party was conveyed to the shady grounds from Mr. Barnum's door. Swings were not forgotten for the children, nor was anything forgotten that conduced to rational joy. If some poor sick person was heard of in the city, one carriage, Mr. Barnum's own, would go somewhat out of the way to stop and leave delicacies and presents, not without a few words of sympathy and comfort. When, on one occasion that I remember, he took two or three hundred people from several towns in the State, and from New York, to Charles Island, a summer place midway between Bridgeport and New Haven, the hospitality was royal, and even the steamboat tickets were mysteriously provided for all.