“I liked the music better than I expected,” said he to me the next day, “but my son was in raptures. He was so perfectly enchanted that he scarcely spoke the whole evening and I would on no account disturb his delightful reveries. When the concert was finished we came out of the theatre. Not a word was spoken. I knew that my musical prodigy was happy among the clouds, and I said nothing. I could not help envying him his love of music, and considered my thirty dollars as nothing, compared to the bliss which it secured to him. Indeed, I was seriously thinking of taking him to the next concert, when he spoke. We were just passing the numerous shows upon the vacant lots. One of the signs attracted him, and he said, ‘Father, let us go in and see the big hog!’ The little scamp! I could have horse-whipped him!” said the father, who, loving a joke, could not help laughing at the ludicrous incident.
Some months afterwards, I was relating this story at my own table to several guests, among whom was a very matter-of-fact man who had not the faintest conception of humor. After the whole party had laughed heartily at the anecdote, my matter-of-fact friend gravely asked:
“And was it a very large hog, Mr. Barnum?”
I made arrangements with the captain of the splendid steamer “Magnolia,” of Louisville, to take our party as far as Cairo, the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, stipulating for sufficient delay in Natchez, Mississippi, and in Memphis, Tennessee, to give a concert in each place. It was no unusual thing for me to charter a steamboat or a special train of cars for our party. With such an enterprise as that, time and comfort were paramount to money.
The time on board the steamer was whiled away in reading, viewing the scenery of the Mississippi, and other diversions. One day we had a pleasant musical festival in the ladies’ saloon for the gratification of the passengers, at which Jenny volunteered to sing without ceremony. It seemed to us she never sang so sweetly before. I also did my best to amuse my fellow passengers with anecdotes and the exhibition of sundry legerdemain tricks which I had been obliged to learn and use in the South years before and under far different circumstances than those which attended the performance now. Among other tricks, I caused a quarter of a dollar to disappear so mysteriously from beneath a card, that the mulatto barber on board came to the conclusion that I was in league with the devil.
The next morning I seated myself for the operation of shaving, and the colored gentleman ventured to dip into the mystery. “Beg pardon, Mr. Barnum, but I have heard a great deal about you, and I saw more than I wanted to see last night. Is it true that you have sold yourself to the devil, so that you can do what you’ve a mind to?”
“Oh, yes,” was my reply, “that is the bargain between us.”
“How long did you agree for?” was the question next in order.
“Only nine years,” said I. “I have had three of them already. Before the other six are out, I shall find a way to nonplus the old gentleman, and I have told him so to his face.”
At this avowal, a larger space of white than usual was seen in the darkey’s eyes, and he inquired, “Is it by this bargain that you get so much money?”