the track; and always stepping at the caboose door, I raised my hat, receiving in return an almost reverent salute, which the occupants of the waiting train thought due, no doubt, to the distinguished person for whom they were ordered by special telegram to make way.
I now began to reflect that the Fort Wayne lecture committee, upon discovering that I did not arrive by the regular passenger train, would not expect me at all, and that probably they might issue small bills announcing my failure to arrive. I therefore prepared the following telegram which I despatched to them on our arrival at Napoleon, the first station at which we stopped:
Lecture Committee, Fort Wayne:—Rest perfectly tranquil. I am to be delivered at Fort Wayne by contract by half-past seven o’clock—special train.
At the same station I received a telegram from Mr. Andrews, the superintendent, asking me how I liked the caboose. I replied:
The springs of the caboose are softer than down; I am as happy as a clam at high water; I am being carried towards Fort Wayne in a style never surpassed by Cæsar’s triumphal march into Rome. Hurrah for the Toledo and Wabash Railroad!
At the invitation of the engineer, I took a ride of twenty miles upon the locomotive. It fairly made my head swim. I could not reconcile my mind to the idea that there was no danger; and intimating to the engineer that it would be a relief to get where I could not see ahead, I was permitted to crawl back again to the caboose.
I reached Fort Wayne in ample time for the lecture; and as the committee had discreetly kept to themselves the fact of my non-arrival by the regular train, probably not a dozen persons were aware of the trouble I had taken to fulfil my engagement, till in the course of my lecture, under the head of “perseverance,” I recounted my day’s adventures, as an illustration of exercising that quality when real necessity demanded. The Fort Wayne papers of the next day published accounts of “Barnum on a Locomotive,” and “A Journey in a Caboose”; and as I always had an eye to advertising, these articles were sent marked to newspapers in towns and cities where I was to lecture, and of course were copied,—thus producing the desired effects, first, of informing the public that the “showman” was coming, and next, assuring the lecture committee that Barnum would be punctually on hand as advertised, unless prevented by “circumstances over which he had no control.”