“That indade I will, if the gintleman pays,” was the reply.
When he came out of the bath he was asked if he would be shampooed. “And what is that?” asked the bewildered Hibernian. The process was explained and he consented to go through with the operation. Thereafter, moved and instigated thereto by the barber and his confederates, Pat permitted Higginson to dye his red hair and whiskers a beautiful brown, and then to curl them. When all was done, the son of Erin looked in the mirror and could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes. A more thorough transformation could scarcely be conceived, and as he went out of the door he said to Higginson:
“Give the generous gintleman me best complements and tell him he can have my turn ony day on the same terms.”
One of the newspaper reporters, who assisted in the joke, published the whole story the next day, and when I called at the barber shop a bill for $1.75 was presented, which, of course, I could do no less than to pay. The joke went the rounds of the papers; and after a few months, an English friend sent me the whole story in a copy of the London Family Herald—a publication that issues about half a million of copies weekly. Mr. Currier, the lithographer, put the joke into pictorial form, representing the Irishman as he appeared before, also as he appeared after the “barbar-ous” operations. After all, it was a good advertisement for me, as well as for Higginson; and it would have been pretty difficult to serve me up about these times in printers’ ink in any form that I should have objected to.
Meanwhile, the Museum flourished better than ever; and I began to make large holes in the mortgages which covered the property of my wife in New York and in Connecticut. Still, there was an immense amount of debts resting upon all her real estate, and nothing but time, economy, industry and diligence would remove the burdens.
