“He must be pretty fast, then.”
“Well, Charley, I’ll drive out by your mother’s the first fine day, and give you a trial.”
“All right,” said little Nutt, “but you had better not wager too much on your fast horse, for you know mine is some pumpkins.”
“Well, Uncle Gid.,” I exclaimed, “you are ‘had’ this time; this little gentleman is not General Tom Thumb, but Commodore Nutt.”
“What!” roared friend Gid.; “do you think I am an infernal fool? Why, I knew Charley Stratton years before you ever saw him, didn’t I, General?”
No one in the room suspected that my little friend was any other than General Tom Thumb, till Mr. William Bassett, the General’s brother-in-law, came in and remarked the “wonderful resemblance to our little Charley, as he looked years ago.”
“Is not this the General?” inquired half a dozen astonished men, who were speedily assured he was not, but was quite another person. This gave rise to a proposition to exhibit the Commodore to the General’s mother, and a coach was procured, and Mr. Bassett, the Commodore, and I went to Mrs. Stratton’s house. When we arrived, the Commodore shouted out:
“How are you, mother?”
But the mother, of all persons in Bridgeport, was not to be deceived, though she expressed her astonishment at the very striking likeness the Commodore bore to her son as he once looked. Mrs. Bassett concurred in the testimony and said the Commodore looked so much like her brother that she was loth to let him go. It is no wonder that other people were deceived by the resemblance.
It was evident that here was an opportunity to turn all doubts into hard cash by simply bringing the two dwarf Dromios together, and showing them on the same platform. I therefore induced Tom Thumb to bring his Western engagements to a close, and to appear for four weeks, beginning with August 11, 1862, in my Museum. Announcements headed “The Two Dromios,” and “Two Smallest Men, and Greatest Curiosities Living,” as I expected, drew large crowds to see them, and many came especially to solve their doubts with regard to the genuineness of the “Nutt.” But here I was considerably nonplussed, for astonishing as it may seem, the doubts of many of the visitors were confirmed! The sharp people who were determined “not to be humbugged, anyhow,” still declared that Commodore Nutt was General Tom Thumb, and that the little fellow whom I was trying to pass off as Tom Thumb, was no more like the General than he was like the man in the Moon. It is very amusing to see how people will sometimes deceive themselves by being too incredulous.