Mr. P. T. Barnum has organized at the Empire Rink a very large exhibition, combining a Museum, Menagarie, International Zoölogical Garden, Polytechnic Institute and Hippodrome. Having examined the various departments of this vast combination, we do not hesitate to recommend our friends to go with their families to visit it, and they will enjoy a treat seldom offered in a lifetime. The department of natural history is especially excellent and interesting, and embraces the largest and rarest collection of wild animals ever exhibited together in this or probably in any other country. Everything connected with the entertainments admirably harmonizes with the good taste and respectability which give to all of Mr. Barnum’s enterprises a refinement and morality which commend them to the most scrupulous. The great Hippodrome Pageant, in which appear so many elephants, camels, dromedaries, horses and ponies, with men, women and children in costumes representing the Arabs and Bedouins of the desert, Roman knights, heralds, warriors, kings, princes and bashaws of the olden time, is truly interesting and grand, and is worth going a long distance to see.
That popular religious journal, the New York Christian Leader, edited by the Rev. G. H. Emerson, speaks as follows:
A GOOD SERMON FOR SHOWMEN.
The success which everywhere attends Barnum’s great show ought to be evidence to the managers who furnish amusement to the public that profanity and indecency of speech and gesture—all of which Mr. Barnum excludes by promptly and indignantly discharging the offender—are not of the nature of supply meeting a popular demand. If a man is coarse and vulgar himself, he usually has manhood enough left not to take his wife and children where coarseness and vulgarity are sure to be witnessed. Mr. Barnum’s combination is now doing for canvas what his Jenny Lind enterprise did for public halls. Its patrons are not individuals, but communities. For example, the factories of Paterson, N. J., were compelled to suspend, the operative population having left, en masse for the show. But this swimming and unsurpassed success would come to a full stop in one day if profanity and indecency, instead of being rigorously forbidden, were encouraged. The community at large respects decency. The show, bewildering, various and mammoth beyond a precedent, is now on its way through New England, in one sense, like “Sherman’s march to the sea,” and a patronage never before anticipated is organized in advance. It is big, and, better still, it is clean—clean to the eye and to the moral sense.
“Nym Crinkle,” the Dramatic Critic of the New York World, wrote a very entertaining column about the show for that journal, and “Trinculo” copied it in full in the “Amusements Gossip” of the New York Leader. The following is extracted from the article:
BARNUM’S UNIVERSAL SHOW.
Barnum, who long ago beat all creation, is now exhibiting his spoils at the Rink. Animated nature and animated art make a stunning combination, especially when the combination is all in active operation, as it generally is about two o clock in the afternoon and eight o’clock in the evening. Then one can enjoy the howls of the animals, the rush and scurry of the arena, the rattlebang of the band, and the delight of ten thousand people, without stopping to discriminate. It is something for the veteran showman to say he has been able to stir the metropolis with his caravan as other and less indifferent villages are stirred by smaller shows. The combination, as shows are rated, is really an extraordinary one, and when it arrives at an average Western city it doubles the population for them, contributing of its own multitudinous teamsters, tricksters, and stirrers-up about three hundred people, with as many more ravening beasts thrown in.
The first living curiosity that one meets at the Rink is Barnum himself uncaged. He still holds to the notion that it is worth fifty cents to look at him, and one dollar to read his life; and as nearly everybody has looked at him and read his life, we presume the rest of the world agrees with him. Still it is curious to observe how the healthy and hearty world, thronging to see the monkeys and the mermaids, mingle awe with their admiration of the greatest curiosity of all. They are subdued by a sense of the showman’s power. They skirt carefully round the edges of his greatness, so as not to attract too much of his attention, for who could tell at what moment, if he so chose, he would exhibit them. We say the healthy and hearty world, for of course the unhealthy and deformed world, which we all know was made to be exhibited, throngs as of old in supplicating procession after him. Three-legged women and four-legged men, and double-headed children may be seen at all hours congregating on the Third avenue in the vicinity of the Rink, seeking audience of the great showman. Indeed, the observant traveller on this great thoroughfare will know, hours before he gets to the Rink, that he is approaching Barnum, by the strange monstrosities, woolly horses, Albino children, and living skeletons that will be observed wending their way from all parts of the world to the great show in hope of getting engagements. Of course, all this adds to the excitement and interest of the eager multitude. But the animals and curiosities inside constitute the real attraction to the public; and a very fine collection of animals it is. The eight or ten royal Abyssinian and Babylonian lions roar less like sucking doves than any that have had their jaws stretched among us since Van Amburgh’s time. As for the rhinoceros, he deserves especial attention, because, as the card on his cage informs us, he is the unicorn of Scripture. But he doesn’t look a bit like the agile fellow that fought for the crown on his hind legs, (ah, he was an artist,) for he eats too much hay, and nothing can be more absurd and contrary to the revolutionary character of the unicorn dear to heraldry than this iron-clad monster eating hay with the demureness of a cow. Still there is danger in his cage, the keeper informs us, and he ought to know, for he probably lived there at some time with him in order to find him out. And he further assures us that the reason Mr. Barnum employs him to take care of the beast is that he is an old sailor, nobody else being able to go round his horn. Time, however would not suffice to relate the wonders of the yak and guayga and the wart hog, none of which are popular pets, nor to tell of the infinite variety of the feline tribe, from felis leo himself to the tiniest cougar. This collection of animals makes what is called the Zoölogical Garden, a distinct apartment of the show. There is a collection of camels—about forty—and several elephants, eating peanuts with singularly disproportioned taste, at the east end, and here, we observe, is the menagerie. The camels, each with his hump tastefully covered with a camel’s hair shawl, wait with meek patience for the ring-master to call them, and they all slide out on their cushioned feet like dusty spectres. It would be well to visit the collection of wild animals after this, and then inspect the exhibition of animated nature, reserving the caravan till the last. But the conscientious visitor has the hippodrome, the hippotheatron, the circus, the arena and the ring to inspect, and unless he hurries up, he will not get through in time. We have found it in our experience that the best plan is to cut the arena, the hippodrome, and the hippotheatron, and stick to the circus. The circus will be found worthy of the carefulest study. It will be found to have a largeness that is new, and certainly it would be difficult to find more performers or have them do more. The Rink, thanks to Barnum, is a popular resort. We forget how many miles of promenade there are through the zoölogical department of the menagerie, but we know that thousands of people may be seen there of a pleasant afternoon, adding a biological interest to the zoölogical exhibit that is well worth noting.
The following is from the New York Daily Standard of Dec. 28, 1871:
UNBOUNDED ENTERPRISE.