Weary of lecturing, singing the song "I would I were a boy again," I
went to see the elephant. To speak truly, I saw not one elephant, but
half a dozen. I had a feast of roaring and a flow of circus. In fact I
indulged in the wildest dissipation. I visited Barnum's circus and
sucked peppermint candy in a way most childlike and bland. The reason
seems obscure, but circuses and peppermint candy are as inseparable as
peanuts and the Bowery. Appreciating this solemn fact, Barnum provides
bigger sticks adorned with bigger red stripes than ever Romans sucked in
the palmy days of the Coliseum. In the dim distance I mistook them for
barbers' poles, but upon direct application I recognized them for my
long lost own.
However, let me, like the Germans, begin with the creation. "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.
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