mated corpse, sold, at the age of 161, to be hawked about the country, for the gain of the exhibitors. Mrs Stowe, in her famous novel, has brought forward nothing so hideously repulsive; and we are satisfied that, had she narrated such a story in her book, one-half of her European readers would have thrown it down with an impatient exclamation of incredulity. But old as she was, Joice Heth appeared to Barnum capable of the production of many dollars. He sold all that he had, and even borrowed; but in the end became the proprietor of this unhappy being for the sum of one thousand dollars, engaged a certain lawyer, Mr Levi Lyman-no inappropriate name—as an assistant in exhibiting, and set the press to work. The exhibition, for a time, proved very profitable, as the old woman was made to sing a succession of Baptist hymns; but when it began to fail, the adroit Barnum was ready with a new stimulant for the public curiosity. Here it is: "When the audiences began to decrease in numbers, a short communication appeared in one of the newspapers, signed A Visitor,' in which the writer claimed to have made an important discovery: He stated that Joice Heth, as at present exhibited, was a humbug, whereas, if the simple truth was told in regard to the exhibition, it was really vastly curious and interesting. The fact is,' said the communication, 'Joice Heth is not a human being. What purports to be a remarkably old woman is simply a curiously constructed automaton, made up of whale bone, india-rubber, and numberless springs ingeniously put together, and made to move at the slightest touch, according to the will of the operator. The exhibitor is a ventriloquist, and all the conversations apparently held with the ancient lady are purely imaginary, so far as she is concerned, for the answers and incidents purporting to be given and related by her, are merely the ventriloquial voice of the exhibitor.' "Maelzel's ingenious mechanism somewhat prepared the way for this announcement, and hundreds who had not visited Joice Heth were now anxious to see the curious automaton; while many who had seen her were equally desirous of a second look, in order to determine whether or not they had been deceived. The consequence was, our audiences again largely increased." "We hastened our return to New York to fill a second engagement I had made with Mr Niblo. The American Institute held its annual Fair at his garden, and my engagement was to commence at the same time. The great influx of visitors to the Fair caused our room to be con tinually crowded, insomuch that we were plicants that the hall was full, and no frequently compelled to announce to ap more could be admitted for the present. In those cases we would hurry up the exhibitions, cut short a hymn or two, answer questions with great rapidity, and politely open the front door as an egress to visitors, at the same time opening the entrance from the garden for the ingress of fresh customers." Sorry are we to say, that the outrages upon the old negress did not end even with her death. She expired a few months after Barnum bought her, and the dissection of the body gave rise to a controversy touching her age: in the course of which constated to the editor of a newspaper, troversy, Lyman, Barnum's assistant, with a view to publication, that the whole history and the years of Joice Heth was the invention of his employer; that Barnum had found the negress in the outhouse of a plantation in Kentucky, extracted her teeth, and instructed her in the Washington story. Mark the impudence of the following remark on the part of the moral Barnum! He had been accused by the editor of a leading newspaper, upon the information of his own assistant, not only of having perpetrated a gross imposture upon the public, but of having used brutal cruelty on the person of an old woman, to give her the appearance of a perfectly fabulous age. He was so far from manifesting any resentment towards his assistant, that he continued him in his employment until Lyman became a Mormonite, and removed to Nauvoo. And so little desirous was he of wishing the American public to understand that, in his first essay at showmanship, he had acted in good faith, that he now says: "The story of Lyman has since been generally accredited as the true history of the old negress, and never, until the present writing, have I said or written a word by way of contradiction or correction. Newspaper and social controversy on the subject (and seldom have vastly more important matters been so largely discussed) served my purpose as a showman,' by keeping my name before the public." What does this amount to, but an assertion that, in America at least, it is better to be accounted a clever rascal than an honest man? Again we repeat, that this is a matter for the Americans to take up. It is for them to decide whether Barnum has libelled his countrymen, or whether the general moral tone prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic is such as he insinuates it to be. For Barnum's pretensions are very large. He represents himself now, not only as opulent, but as being a man of high consideration; and he attributes his position to practices inconsistent with common honesty. Is he right or is he wrong in his estimate? We cannot say. Impudence like this baffles speculation; and we must leave him to the judgment of his countrymen. "Aunt Joice" being evidently not likely to last long, whether her age was 160, or only the half of it, Barnum, with his usual prudence, looked out for a novelty to take her place, and pitched upon a certain platespinner, or mountebank, called Antonio-a very poor Italian snake, no better than the half-nude acrobats who are permitted, by the negligence of the police, occasionally to infest our streets-whom, having got thoroughly washed, he dignified by the name of Signor Vivalla. This signor could balance guns upon his nose, walk on stilts, and perform various of the feats which are now only astonishing to the most remote of our agricultural population. But they were quite new when Barnum engaged him, and might possibly, as feats, have drawn a dollar or two per night for their exhibition, after all the expenses were paid. Not much more assuredly; but the acute Barnum saw his opportunity. A native professor of gymnastics had a strong party, and, when Vivalla first appeared, that professor had collected a sibilant audience. Immediately Barnum took his line. He challenged, in the name of the great Vivalla, any native performer to compete with him on the stage, for a wager of a thousand dollars, and, that being accepted by the American acrobat Roberts, rashly, and in such a way as must have led to his forfeiture of the stake, Barnum brought the two men together, made the show, and reaped the advantage, as long as it would pay, of the seeming competition between the American and Italian artists. That Barnum should have engaged in such petty frauds is the apparent complacency of his renot surprising; our only wonder is at velations. Yet, notwithstanding all his "dodges," Barnum was for a long time unsuccessful. In fact, he was so far from making a fortune in America, that in 1841 he became, as he candidly admits, "about as poor as I should ever wish to be. I looked around in vain for employment congenial to my feelings, that would serve to keep my head above water." His first decided hit was the purchase of the American museum, New York, a transaction which he contrived to carry through upon credit. This emporium of delights is not to be classed with the collections of specimens of natural history and antiquities which are to be found in most large cities. It was, and we presume is, a gigantic congregation of shows of all kinds, as may be gathered from the following description of it by the spirited proprietor: glers, automatons, ventriloquists, living "Industrious fleas, educated dogs, jugstatuary, tableaux, gypsies, albinoes, fat boys, giants, dwarfs, rope-dancers, caricatures of phrenology, and 'live Yankees,' pantomime, instrumental music, singing and dancing in great variety (including Ethiopians), etc. Dioramas, panoramas, models of Dublin, Paris, Niagara, Jerusalem, etc., mechanical figures, fancy glass-blowing, knitting machines and dissolving views, American Indians, inother triumphs in the mechanical arts, cluding their warlike and religious ceremonies enacted on the stage, etc., etc. "I need not specify the order of time in which these varieties were presented to the public. In one respect there has been a thorough though gradual change in the general plan, for the moral drama is now, and has been for several years, the principal feature of the Lecture Room of the American Museum. "Apart from the merit and interest of these performances, and apart from everything connected with the stage, my permanent collection of curiosities is, without doubt, abundantly worth the uniform charge of admission to all the entertainments of the establishment, and I can therefore afford to be accused of 'humbug' when I add such transient novelties as increase its attractions. If I have exhibited a questionable dead mermaid in my Museum, it should not be overlooked that I have also exhibited cameleopards, a rhinoceros, grisly bears, ourang-outangs, great serpents, etc., about which there could be no mistake, because they were alive; and I hope that a little claptrap' occasionally, in the way of transparencies, flags, exaggerated pictures, and puffing advertisements, might find an offset in a wilderness of wonderful, instructive, and amusing realities. Indeed, I cannot doubt that the sort of clap-trap here referred to is allowable, and that the public like a little of it mixed up with the great realities which I provide. The titles of humbug,' and the prince of humbugs,' were first applied to me by myself." The story of the mermaid is rather a curious one. It was, says Barnum, "an ugly, dried-up, black-looking, and diminutive specimen, about three feet long. Its mouth was open, its tail turned over, and its arms thrown up, giving it the appearance of having died in great agony." This interesting exile from the bowers of Amphitrite was in reality neither more nor less than an ingenious manufacture, composed of the head, body, and arms of an ape, and the tail of a fish, and was said to have been brought from Japan. An ordinary showman would probably have rejected it as little likely to prove attractive: Barnum, however, saw his way at once, and hired it for his museum. The first thing was to set the press to work, and the puff preliminary was administered in the following fashion :"In due time a communication appeared in the New York Herald, dated and mailed in Montgomery, Ala., giving the news of the day, trade, the crops, political gossip, etc., and also an incidental para graph about a certain Dr Griffin, agent of the Lyceum of Natural History in London, recently from Pernambuco, who had in his possession a most remarkable curiosity, being nothing less than a veritable mermaid taken among the Fejee Islands, and preserved in China, where the doctor had bought it at a high figure for the Lyceum of Natural History. "A week or ten days afterwards, a letter of similar tenor, dated and mailed in Charleston, S. C., varying of course in the items of local news, was published in another New York paper. "This was followed by a third letter, dated and mailed in. Washington city, published in still another New York paper -there being in addition the expressed hope that the editors of the Empire City would beg a sight of the extraordinary curiosity before Dr Griffin took ship for England." Flinty indeed would have been the heart of "Dr Griffin," had he resisted such appeals; and accordingly a gentleman, bearing that fabulous name, in due time appeared at one of the principal hotels in Philadelphia, where "his gentlemanly, dignified, yet social manners and liberality, gained him a fine reputation." Previous to taking his departure, he indulged the landlord and a few select friends with a view of the remarkable phenomenon in his possession; and this fact being duly chronicled in the Philadelphia papers, naturally excited considerable curiosity in New York. Now, who was "Dr Griffin of Pernambuco?" Even the same trusty Levi Lyman, who acted as Barnum's assistant in the disgusting exhibition of Joice Heth, and in consequence of whose communications to the newspapers, his employer had been accused both of imposture and cruelty! This fraud was rather successful. Barnum prepared woodcuts of most enticing nereids, and got them inserted in the newspapers. He had transparences painted, and hung out gigantic flags with such exaggerated pictures upon them, that even Lyman experienced the unusual sensation of shame, and threatened to strike work and abscond, if the energetic Barnum did not draw it a little milder. How the American public could tolerate such a piece of impudent imposture is to us incomprehensible. The mermaid, however, could not be reckoned on as a lasting attraction, and Barnum was on the look-out for novelties. At Bridgefort he heard of a remarkably small child, whose age was, in reality, five years. Barnum hired him from his parents, had him brought to New York, and announced him for exhibition in his Museum bills, "as General Toм THUMB, a dwarf of eleven years of age, just arrived from England!" The infant was sharp, and, under the unscrupulous training of Barnum, rapidly became an adept in the art of deception. We need not chronicle the success of this speculation, both in the United States, and in England, whither Barnum brought his dwarf. By dint of persevering impudence he made his way. Tom Thumb was exhibited at Buckingham Palace, and, in consequence, every one flocked to see him. The profits of a successful show are enormous; and Barnum realised a competency before he returned to America. Many will remember that passage, which poor Haydon, in the hour of his bitter agony, entered in his journal but a few days before his deplorable end-contrasting the reception of this diminutive mimic with that which the English public accorded to his last pictorial efforts. He wrote: "They rush by thousands to see Tom Thumb. They push, they fight, they scream, they faint, they cry help and murder! and oh and ah! They see my bills, my boards, my caravans, and don't read them. Their eyes are open, but their sense is shut. It is an insanity, a rabies, a madness, a furor, a dream. I would not have believed it of the English people." But The Such thoughts must have come naturally, and painfully, not to Haydon alone, but to many neglected men of genius, who in the midst of their poverty, misery, and despair, saw an adventurer reaping a fortune by the exhibition of a freak of nature. the reflection is hardly just. public has an undoubted right to select its own amusements; and if people choose to pay their shillings or halfcrowns to see the absurd mummeries of a dwarf, rather than for recreation of a higher intellectual order, we have no right to blame them. Tastes vary. Queen Elizabeth, though she had no objection to the representation of the plays of Shakespeare, was more partial to the spectacle of a bear-baiting; and there are practical philosophers who would rather enjoy a pipe and a pot of porter, than regale their minds and fatigue their limbs by a visit to the glories of the Crystal Palace. We have already stated our dislike and objection to the exhibition of dwarfs, or any other monstrosities of the human species; but we have no wish to dogmatise even upon that sentiment. Those who have a hankering after giants, dwarfs, and albinoes, will of course repair to the caravans; nor shall we push our censure further than an expression of extreme dubiety as to the correctness of their taste. We do not blame Barnum for having exhibited Tom Thumb; but we denounce him for his acknowledged lies, and for his confessed deceptions. Fraud, falsehood, and wilful imposition were the principal causes of his success in almost every speculation which he has set down; and so far from being ashamed of his conduct, he is positively proud of it. The mendicant who, on the highway, exhibits sores on his person produced by the application to the skin of a half-penny dipped in aquafortis, and solicits charity on account of his affliction, stands, morally speaking, quite as high as Barnum, who, if one-half of his narrative be true, has most richly deserved the treadmill. Read his book, and you will see that most of what he calls his "speculations" are attempts to obtain money under false pretences-an article of dittay well known in this country, and constantly visited with punishment. If it should be said that the public must take the consequences of its own credulity; we ask what is the difference between the case of Barnum, and that of the person who tries to collect alms by means of false certificates? We really have no patience to go further with this book. It does not even amuse us; for the anecdotes which are meant to be amusing are so disfigured with Yankee slang, and so intolerably egotistical, that the gorge rises as we read. More merciful towards Barnum than he has proved to himself, we pass over the scandalous story of the " Woolly Horse "—that 1855.] 66 Revelations of a Showman. of the "Buffalo Hunt,"-and various Mr Barnum now resides near New professed and professional philan- If we could enter, with anything like The book, however, may be useful. It discloses much of which the public are not generally aware; and is, in fact, the profoundest and most pungent satire ever written upon the modern system of newspaper puffery and deceit. "Advertise!" says Barnum; and, in the main, he is perfectly right. The power of the press is prodigious; but, like all other powers, it may be fearfully misapplied. Of course so long as advertisements are, in their own character, unobjectionable, they must be inserted. If a man chooses to aver that he vends the best wine, meat, bread, tea, sugar, breeches, or boots in the community, he is entitled to say so, taking the responsibility of "making his vaunting good." These things do not derange trade the serious evil commences when journalists pledge their reputation for the excellence of things which they know to be truly unworthy, or for the authenticity of deceptions. In America it would appear, judging from Barnum's revelations, that the press is generally venal. He takes every opportunity to insinuate that he had it at his command, and does not attempt to disguise that the preliminary Mermaid puffs were written by himself. How then came they to be inserted? We would advise the American editors, if possible, "to wash this filthy witness from their hands," otherwise it will be difficult to acquit : |