The Life of P.T. Barnum. P.T. Barnum
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The basket loads, the arms full, and the bags full of soiled tin and glass bottles which were carried out of our store during the first few days after the lottery drawing, constituted a series of most ludicrous scenes. Scarcely a customer was permitted to depart without one or more specimens of tin or green glass. Within ten days every glass bottle had disappeared, and the old tinware was replaced by a smaller quantity as bright as silver.
My uncle Aaron Nichols, husband of my aunt Laura, was a hat manufacturer on a large scale in Grassy Plains. His employees purchased quantities of tickets. He bought twelve, and was very lucky. He drew seven prizes. Unfortunately they were all to be paid in tin! He took them home one day in his wagon – looking like a tin peddler as he went through the street. Two days afterwards aunt Laura brought them all back.
“I have spent six hours,” said she, “in trying to rub some of this tin bright, but it is impossible. I want you to give me some other goods for it.” I told her it was quite out of the question.
“What on earth do you suppose I can do with all this black tin?” said she.
I replied that if my uncle Nichols had the good fortune to draw so many prizes, it would be presumption in me to dictate what use he should make of them.
“Your uncle is a fool, or he would never have bought any tickets in such a worthless lottery,” said she.
I laughed outright, and that only added to her vexation. She called me many hard names, but I only laughed in return.
Finally, says I, “Aunt Laura, why don’t you take some of your tin over to ‘Aunt Rushia?’ I heard her inquiring this morning at the breakfast table where she could buy some tin skimmers.”
“Well, I can supply her,” said my aunt Laura, taking half-a-dozen skimmers and an assortment of other articles in her apron and proceeding at once to my boarding-house across the street.
“Aunt Rushia,” said she, as she entered the door, “I have come to sell you some tin skimmers.”
“Mercy on us!” exclaimed “Aunt Rushia,” “I have got skimmers enough.”
“Why, Taylor Barnum told me you wanted to buy some,” said aunt Laura in surprise.
“I am afraid that boy is a mischievous young joker,” said aunt Rushia, laughing; “he did that to plague me, for I drew seven skimmers in the lottery.”
Aunt Laura returned more vexed than ever. She emptied the whole lot of tin upon the floor of the store, and declared she would never have it in her house again. She returned home.
I immediately dispatched the lot of tin to her house in a wagon. It reached there before she did, and when she entered her kitchen she found the tinware piled up in the middle of the room, with the following specimen of my poetry dangling from the handle of a tin coffee-pot:
“There was a man whose name was Nick,
He drew seven prizes very slick;
For the avails he took tinware,
Which caused his wife to fret and swear.”
It was several weeks before my aunt Laura forgave me the joke. At about that period, however, she sent me a mince pie nicely covered over in clean white paper, marked on the outside, “A mince pie for Taylor Barnum.”
I was delighted. I cut the string which surrounded it and took off the paper. The pie was baked in one of the unwashed tin platters! Of course I could not eat it, but it was an evidence to me of reconciliation, and that afternoon I took tea with my aunt, where I had enjoyed many an excellent meal before, and have done the same thing scores of times since.
My grandfather enjoyed my lottery speculation very much, and seemed to agree with many others, who declared that I was indeed “a chip of the old block.”
Occasionally some one of my school-mates in Bethel would visit me in the evening, and sleep with me at my boarding-house. James Beebe, a boy of my own age, once came for that purpose. One of our nearest neighbors was Mr. Amos Wheeler, son of the widow, “Aunt Jerusha.” As he and his wife were absent that night, they had arranged that I should sleep in their house, so as not to have their children left alone. I took my chum Jim Beebe with me, as a fellow-lodger. Several days afterwards Jim called on me and said that in dressing himself in the morning, at Mr. Wheeler’s, he had put on the wrong stockings. Instead of getting his own, which were a new pair, he had got an old pair belonging to Mr. Wheeler. They were distinctly marked “A. W.” I told him the only way was for him to return to Mrs. Wheeler her husband’s stockings, and explain to her how the mistake had been made. He did so, and soon returned in a high state of anger. He called Mrs. Wheeler all sorts of hard names. It seems that she examined the old stockings, and notwithstanding the initials of her husband’s name, “A. W.,” were worked into the top of them, she denied that they were his, and of course denied having any stockings in her possession belonging to Jim Beebe.
I confess I thought her conduct was unaccountable. It was difficult to believe that for the sake of a pair of stockings she would state an untruth, and yet it was evident that “A.W.” were not the initials of James Beebe’s name, and that they were the initials of Amos Wheeler. Jim declared that he discovered his mistake on the very day that he dressed himself at Amos Wheeler’s house, and of course Mrs. Wheeler must be mistaken. I showed the stockings to Mr. Wheeler. He did not know so much about his wardrobe as his wife did, but he said he was sure his wife could not be mistaken. Of course we were just as confident that she was mistaken. There could be no doubt about it, but Jim was compelled to take home the old stockings. I was considerably vexed by the circumstance. Jim was downright mad, and declared he would not sleep in Grassy Plains again under any consideration, lest the women might steal all his clothes, and claim them as their own.
I met him a week afterwards, and commenced laughing at him about his old stockings.
“Oh, that is all right,” said he. “You see I happened to sleep with John Williams a night or two before I slept with you, and as all the Williams boys slept in the same room, I got the wrong pair of stockings. John Williams met me a few days ago and told me his brother Adam had a pair of stockings with my initials marked on them, and he concluded therefore that I had worn his and left mine by mistake. I called on Adam, and found that it was as he suspected.”
So it seemed that the A. W. stood for Adam Williams, instead of Amos Wheeler, and that Mrs. Wheeler was right after all. It certainly was a singular coincidence, and made a strong impression on my mind. I have many a time since that simple event reflected that scores, probably hundreds of innocent men have been executed on circumstantial evidence less probable than that which went to prove Amos Wheeler to be the owner of the old stockings bearing his initials.
On Saturday nights I usually went to Bethel to remain with my mother and attend church on the Sabbath. My mother continued for some years to keep the village tavern. One Saturday evening a violent thunder shower came up; it was very dark, and rained in torrents, with occasional intervals of a few minutes. Miss Mary Wheeler (who was a milliner) sent word across to the store that there was a girl at her house from Bethel, who had come up on horseback to obtain her new bonnet, that she was afraid to return home alone, and if I was going to Bethel on horseback that night, she wished me to escort her customer. I assented, and in a few minutes my horse was at “Aunt Rushia’s” door. I went in, and was introduced to a fair, rosy-cheeked, buxom-looking girl, with beautiful white teeth, named “Chairy Hallett.” Of course “Chairy” was a nickname, which I subsequently learned meant “Charity.”
I assisted the young lady into her saddle, was soon mounted on my own horse, and we trotted slowly towards Bethel.
The brief view that I had of this girl by candle-light, had sent all sorts of agreeable sensations through my bosom. I was in a state of feeling quite new to me, and as unaccountable as it was novel. I opened a conversation with her, and finding her affable and in no degree prim or “stuck-up,” (although she was on horseback,) I regretted that the distance to Bethel was not five miles instead of one. A vivid flash of lightning at that moment lighted up the horizon, and gave me a fair view of the face of my interesting companion.