The following day the exhibition opened, and from the first was crowded by throngs of the best people in the city. One day, in the midst of the exhibition, it was discovered that the case containing all the valuable presents Tom Thumb had received from royalty' etc., was missing.
The alarm was instantly given, and the police notified. A reward was offered of 2,000 francs, and, after a day or two, the thief was captured and the jewels returned. After that the case of presents was more carefully guarded.
Everyone who goes to Brussels is supposed to visit the field of
Waterloo; so, before they left, the entire party—Tom Thumb,
Barnum, Prof. Pinte (tutor), and Mr. Stratton (father of the
General), and Mr. H. G. Sherman, went together.
After visiting the church in the village of Waterloo and viewing the memorial tablets there, they passed to the house where Lord Uxbridge—Marquis of Anglesey—had had his leg amputated. There is a little monument in the garden over the shattered limb, and a part of the boot that covered it was seen in the house. Barnum procured a three-inch bit of the boot for his Museum, at the same time remarking, that if the lady in charge was as liberal to all visitors, that boot had held out wonderfully since 1815.
On approaching the ground they were beset by a dozen or more guides, each one professing to know the exact spot where every man had stood, and each claiming to have himself taken part in the struggle, although most of them were less than twenty-five, and the battle had been fought some thirty years before. They finally accepted one old man, who at first declared that he had been killed in the front ranks, but afterward acknowledged that he had only been wounded and left on the field for dead three days.
After having the location of Napoleon's Guard, the Duke of Wellington, the portion of the field where Blucher entered with the Prussian army, pointed out to them, and the spots where fell Sir Alexander Gordon and other celebrities, they asked the guide if he knew where Captain Tippitiwichet, of Connecticut, was killed? "Oh, oui, Monsieur," replied the guide confidently. After pointing out the precise spots where fictitious friends from Coney Island, New Jersey, Cape Cod and Saratoga had received their death-wounds, they paid the old humbug and dismissed him.
Upon leaving the field they were met by another crowd of peasants with relics of the battle for sale. Barnum bought a large number of pistols, bullets, brass French eagles, buttons, etc., for the Museum, and the others were equally liberal in their purchases. They bought also maps, guide-books and pictures, until Mr. Stratton expressed his belief that the "darned old battle of Waterloo" had cost more since it was fought than it ever did before.
Some months afterwards, while they were in Birmingham, they made the acquaintance of a firm who manufactured and sent to Waterloo barrels of these "relics" every year.
Four or five miles on the road home they had the misfortune to break the axle-tree of the carriage. It was past one o'clock, and the exhibition was advertised to commence in Brussels at two. Of course, they could not expect to walk the distance in less than three hours, and Barnum was disposed to give up the afternoon performance altogether. But Mr. Stratton could not bear the idea of losing six or eight hundred francs, so, accompanied by the interpreter, Prof. Pinte, he rushed down the road to a farm-house, followed leisurely by the rest of the party.
Mr. Stratton asked the old farmer if he had a carriage. He had not. "Have you no vehicle?" he inquired.