“You don’t mean to say you will never marry,” I remarked.
“No, not exactly,” replied the Commodore, complacently, “but I have concluded not to marry until I am thirty.”
“I suppose you intend to marry one of your size?” I said.
“I am not particular in that respect,” but seeing my jocose mood, he continued, with a comical leer, “I think I should prefer marrying a good, green country girl, to anybody else.”
This was said with a degree of nonchalance, which none can appreciate who do not know him.
To make sure that a lack of memory has not misled me as to any of the facts in regard to the courtship and wedding of Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, I will here say that, after writing out the story, I read it to the parties personally interested, and they give me leave to say that, in all particulars, it is a correct statement of the affair, except that Lavinia remarked:
“Well, Mr. Barnum, your story don’t lose any by the telling”; and the Commodore denies the “rolling tear,” when informed of the engagement of the little pair.
In June 1869, the report was started, for the third or fourth time, in the newspapers, that Commodore Nutt and Miss Minnie Warren were married—this time at West Haven, in Connecticut. The story was wholly untrue, nor do I think that such a wedding is likely to take place, for, on the principle that people like their opposites, Minnie and the Commodore are likely to marry persons whom they can literally “look up to”—that is, if either of them marries at all it will be a tall partner.
Soon after the wedding of General Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, a lady came to my office and called my attention to a little six-paged pamphlet which she said she had written, entitled “Priests and Pigmies,” and requested me to read it. I glanced at the title, and at once estimating the character of the publication, I promptly declined to devote any portion of my valuable time to its perusal.
“But you had better look at it, Mr. Barnum; it deeply interests you, and you may think it worth your while to buy it.”