A NEW EXPERIENCE—“DOING NOTHING” A FAILURE—EXCITEMENT DEMANDED-VISIT OF ENGLISH FRIENDS—I SHOW THEM OUR COUNTRY—NIAGARA FALLS—WE VISIT CUBA—NEW ORLEANS—MAMMOTH CAVE—WASHINGTON—“CASTLE THUNDER”—TRIP TO CALIFORNIA—SALT LAKE CITY—I OFFER BRIGHAM YOUNG TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS TO “SHOW” HIM “DOWN EAST”—AM “INTERVIEWED” AT SACRAMENTO AND SAN FRANCISCO—THE CHINESE—SEA LIONS—THE GEYSERS—MARIPOSA—THE BIG TREES—INSPIRATION POINT—YOSEMITE VALLEY—THE REMARKABLE TOWN OF GREELEY, IN COLORADO—QUEBEC—SAGINAW RIVER—SARATOGA—ALICE CARY—WILD BUFFALO HUNT IN KANSAS—MY GREAT TRAVELLING SHOW—THE WINTER EXHIBITION IN NEW YORK—THE EMPIRE RINK—SUCCESS OF THE SHOW—OPINIONS OF THE PRESS—CURIOSITIES FROM CALIFORNIA—MY IMITATORS—ATTEMPTS TO DECEIVE AND SWINDLE THE PUBLIC.
EVERY one knows the story of the Emperor Charles the Fifth. His ambition gratified to satiety in the conquest of kingdoms, and the firm establishment of his empire, he craved rest. He abdicated his throne, “retired from business,” content to live on his laurels in the peaceful shades of the Cloister at Yustee. The tradition is that here he forgot the world without, withdrew in thought as in person from the cares and turmoils of state, and found rest and cheerfulness by alternating his devotions with the tinkering of clocks. Perhaps every one is not so familiar with the somewhat recent correction by Mr. Stirling of this romantic story. In fact, the Emperor was never so restless as when he was taking rest; was never so full of the perplexities of empire as when, in “due form,” he had shaken them off. In the Cloister he was the same man that he was in the Camp and the Court, and when he sought to repress his energies, they simply tormented him.
Not denying that my egotism is equal to a good deal, I must beg my readers not to suppose that I assume for my own history a very extended similarity to that of the greatest monarch of his time. In fact, the points of difference are quite as striking as those of resemblance. It is true, we both tried the “clock business;” but I must claim that my tinkering in that way throws that of the Emperor entirely in the shade. I was not, however, fool enough to go into a cloister. Let not an illustration any more than a parable “run on all fours.” But I want a royal illustration; and the history of Charles the Fifth, in the particular of abdicating for rest, I find very pertinent to my own experience. I took a formal, and as I then supposed, a last adieu of my readers on my fifty-ninth birth-day. I was, as I had flattered myself, through with travel, with adventure, and with business, save so far as the care of my competence would require my attention. My book closed without a suspicion that in any subsequent edition “more of the same sort” would make possible an Additional Chapter. It is with a sense of surprise, and withal a feeling akin to the ludicrous, that in this new edition, I cannot bring my career up to my sixty-second year, without filling a few more pages, in their contents not unlike in kind to those which make the bulk of my book.
As stated on page 768, my final retirement from the managerial profession closed with the destruction of my Museum by fire, March 3, 1868. But when I wrote that sentence I had not learned by a three years’ cessation of business, how utterly fruitless it is to attempt to chain down energies which are peculiar to my nature. No man not similarly situated can imagine the ennui which seizes such a nature after it has lain dormant for a few months. Having “nothing to do,” I thought at first was a very pleasant, as it was to me an entirely new sensation.
“I would like to call on you in the summer, if you have any leisure, in Bridgeport,” said an old friend.
“I am a man of leisure and thankful that I have nothing to do; so you cannot call amiss,” I replied with an immense degree of self-satisfaction.
“Where is your office down-town when you live in New York?” asked another friend.
“I have no office,” I proudly replied. “I have done work enough, and shall play the rest of my life. I don’t go down-town once a week; but I ride in the Park every day, and am at home much of my time.”
I am afraid that I chuckled often, when I saw rich merchants and bankers driving to their offices on a stormy morning, while I, looking complacently from the window of my cozy library, said to myself, “Let it snow and blow, there’s nothing to call me out to-day.” But Nature will assert herself. Reading is pleasant as a pastime; writing without any special purpose soon tires; a game of chess will answer as a condiment; lectures, concerts, operas, and dinner parties are well enough in their way; but to a robust, healthy man of forty years’ active business life, something else is needed to satisfy. Sometimes like the truant school-boy I found all my friends engaged, and I had no play-mate. I began to fill my house with visitors, and yet frequently we spent evenings quite alone. Without really perceiving what the matter was, time hung on my hands, and I was ready to lecture gratuitously for every charitable cause that I could benefit.
Then I, who had travelled so many years, that almost all cities seemed to me as the same old brick and mortar, began now to think I would like to travel. In the autumn of 1869, after my family had moved for the winter from Bridgeport to our New York residence, an English friend came with his eldest daughter to America especially to visit me. This friend was Mr. John Fish, and he is an old friend of the reader also, for he is the enterprising cotton-mill proprietor, of Bury, England, fully described in chapter xxxii of this book, in which he is mentioned as “Mr. Wilson.” When I was writing that chapter, I had no authority to append his real name to the faithful photograph of the man; but Mr. Fish gives me his consent to use it now. I need not say how pleased I was to see my friend, and how happy I was to show a representative Englishman whatever was worth seeing in the metropolis and elsewhere in the United States.