on. "Here,
ladies and gentlemen, is for sale Mr. Barnum's Autobiography, full of
interest and anecdote, one of the most charming productions ever issued
from the press, 900 pages, thirty-two full-page engravings, reduced from
$3.50 to $1.50. Every purchaser enters free."

How ordinary mortals can resist buying Barnum's Autobiography for one
dollar--such a bargain as never was--is incomprehensible. I believe
they can not. I believe they do their duty like men. As one man I
resisted, because I belong to the press, and therefore am not mortal.
Who ever heard of a journalist getting a bargain? With Spartan firmness
I turned a deaf ear to the persuasive music of the propagandist, and
entered where hope is all before. I was not staggered by a welcome from
all the Presidents of the United States, Fitz-Greene Halleck, General
Hooker, and Gratz Brown. These personages are rather woodeny and red
about the face, as though flushed with victories of the platform or the
table, but I recognize their fitness in a menagerie. What athlete has
turned more somersaults than some of these representative men? What lion
has roared more gently than a few of these sucking doves? Barnum's tact
in appropriately grouping curiosities, living and dead, is too well
known to require comment. Passing what Sam Weller would call "a reg'lar
knock-down of intellect," I took my seat high in the air amid a dense
throng of my fellow-creatures, and realized how many people it takes to
make up the world. What did I see? I saw double. I beheld not one ring
but two, in each of which the uncommon variety of man was disporting in
an entertaining manner. I felt for these uncommon men. Think what
immortal hates must arise from these dual performances! We all like to
receive the reward of merit, but when two performances are going on
simultaneously, how are the artists to know for whom it is intended?
Applause is the sweet compensation for which all strive privately or
publicly, and to be cheated out of it, or left in doubt as to its
destination, is a refined form of the Inquisition. Fancy the sensations
of the man balancing plates on the little end of nothing,--a feat to
which he has consecrated his life,--at thought of his neighbor's
performance of impossible feats in the air! It would be more than human
in both not to wish the other in Jericho, or in some equally remote
quarter of the globe. I sympathized with them. I became bewildered in my
endeavors to keep one ey