"My Dear Coup: Yours received. I will join you in a show for next spring and will probably have Admiral Dot well trained this winter and have him and Harrison in the show. Wood will sell all his animals right, and will furnish several tip-top museum curiosities. You need to spend several months in New York arranging for curiosities, cuts, cages, bills, etc. All things got from Wood I will settle for with him and give the concern credit. We can make a stunning museum department. If you want to call it my museum and use my name it may be used by allowing me the same very small percentage that Wood allows for calling himself my successor (3 per cent on receipts). You can have a Cardiff Giant that won't crack, also a moving figure, Sleeping Beauty or Dying Zouave—a big Gymnastic figure like that in Wood's museum, and lots of other good things, only you need time to look them up and prepare wagons, etc., etc.
"Yours truly,
"P. T. Barnum."
"I will spare time to cook up the show in New York when you come. I think Siamese Twins would pay."
The year 1884 is a memorable one in the annals of circus history, and circus men remember it as the "White Elephant Year." For many years persistent attempts had been made by enterprising showmen to secure for exhibition purposes a sacred white elephant. Schemes by the score had been discussed in the confidential councils of the showmen in winter quarters, with a view to faking a black elephant into a white one, but without satisfactory results. In the winter of 1883, however, it was given out by Mr. Barnum's manager that he had positively succeeded in purchasing from the King of Siam a sacred white elephant. The press was splendidly "worked" in advance, and the sacred white elephant monopolized the gossip of circus circles.
THE RIVAL WHITE ELEPHANTS
A great rivalry had for some years existed between Mr. Barnum and a Philadelphia circus man, and the public was greatly surprised, just before the opening of the season, to find that, according to newspaper report, the latter also had quietly and unostentatiously imported a sacred white elephant known as the "Light of Asia," which, from the descriptions of the few favored scribes who had seen it, was a marvel of beauty and color. Rumors also were circulated that Barnum's white elephant was not genuine, but only a diseased or leprous elephant with a "blaze" of cream color down its trunk, and discolored or spotted legs, while the Philadelphia showman's animal was of snowy whiteness, without spot or blemish. Public sentiment ran high, especially in Philadelphia, where the shows were to exhibit simultaneously. While public opinion was divided as to the genuineness of these "sacred" animals, it may be well to say that the Barnum animal was as good a specimen of the genuine white elephant as could be procured, while the Philadelphia elephant, pretty as a picture and superbly snow white in color, was supposed to be a lively "fake."
WHEN A "WHITE ELEPHANT" WAS NEEDED.
While on exhibition, this "Light of Asia" was almost entirely covered with a black velvet-spangled cloth, and the trunk had been manipulated in such a way that visitors could touch it, and as no coloring matter came off on their hands I presume that part of the body had in some way been "sized" or enameled.