but, likewise, complete discomfiture. Pistols
were fired at him, pianos played and songs sung for him, and, finally,
his daguerreotype taken on prepared metallic plates set upright in the
haunted room. One shrewd artist brought out an "exact photographic
likeness" of the distinguished stranger on cartes de visite, and made
immense sales. The apparitions, too, multiplied. An old man, a woman,
and a child made their appearance in the house of wonders, and, at last,
a gory head with distended eyeballs, swimming in a sea of blood, upon a
platter--like that of Holofernes--capped the climax.

Certain wiseacres here began to see political allusions in the Ghost,
and many actually took the whole affair to be a cunningly devised
political satire upon this or that party, according as their sympathies
swayed them.

It would have been a remarkable portion of "this strange, eventful
history," of course, if "Barnum" could have escaped the accusation of
being its progenitor.

I was continually beset, and frequently, when more than usually busy,
thoroughly annoyed by the innuendoes of my visitors, that I was the
father of "the Ghost."

"Come, now, Mr. Barnum--this is going a little too far!" some good old
dame or grandfather would say to me. "You oughtn't to scare people in
this way. These ghosts are ugly customers!"

"My dear Sir," or "Madam," I would say, as the case might be, "I do
assure you I know nothing whatever about the Ghost"--and as for
"spirits," you know I never touch them, and have been preaching against
them nearly all my life."

"Well! well! you will have the last turn," they'd retort, as they edged
away; "but you needn't tell us. We guess we've found the ghost."

Now, all I can add about this strange hallucination is, that those who
came to me to see the original "Carter," really saw the "Elephant."

The wonderful apparition disappeared, at length, as suddenly as he had
come. The "Bull's-Eye Brigade," as the squad of police put on duty to
watch the neighborhood, for various reasons, was termed, hung to their
work, and flashed the light of their lanterns into the faces of lonely
couples, for some time afterward; but quiet, at length, settled down
over all: and it has been it seems, reserved for my pen to record
briefly the history of "The Twenty-seventh street Ghost."

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE MOON-HOAX.

The most stupendous scientific imposition upon the public that the
generation with which we are num