The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-28

here that this Identical preserved speci-
 men was exhibited in London in 1872, as I fully verified on my visit 10 mat eity
 in 1858. for found an advertisement or
 it in an old file of the London Times
 and friend gave me a copy Of the
 Mirror. published by J. Limbard, 5S0
 Strand. November g, 1922, containing a eIit of this same creature and two pages
 Of letter press describing it, together
 with an account of other mermaids said
 to have been captured in different parts of the world. The Mirror stated that
 this specimen was the great source of attraction in the British metropolis, and
 three, to four hundred people every day
 paid their shilling to see it.
 This was the curiosity which had
 fallen into Mir. Kimball's hands. I re-
 quested my naturalist's opinion of the
 genuineness of the animal, and he said
 he could not conceive how it could have.
 been manufactured, for he never saw a
 monkey with such peculiar teeth, arms,
 hands, etc., and he never saw fish
 with such peculiar fins; but he did not
 believe in mermaids. Nevertheless
 concluded to hire this curiosity and to
 modify the general incredulity as to the
 possibility of the existence of mermafds
 (which was evidently not a very hard
 task in those days), and to awaken a
 curiosity to see and examine the speei-
 men I invoked the potent power of
 printers ink.
 Since Japan has been opened to the
 outer world it has been discovered that
 certain artists, in that country manu-
 lecture a great variety of fabulous anil
 mals with an ingenuity and mechanical
 perfection well calculated to deceive.
 No doubt my mermaid was a specimen
 of this curious manufacture. used it
 mainly to advertise the regular busi- ness of the museum, and this effective,
 indirect advertising is the only feature can commend in special show, of which, confess, I am not proud. Newspapers throughout the country copied the mermaid notices. for they were novel and caught the attention of readers. Thus was the fame of the mu- scum as well as the mermaid waited from one end of the land to the other. was careful to keep up the excitement, for knew that every dollar sown in advertising would return in tens and perhaps hundreds in a future harvest, and after obtaining all the notoriety possible by advertising and exhibiting the mermaid at the museum, sent the
 curiosity throughout the country. di-
 recting my agent to everywhere adver- tise it as From Barnum's Great Amer ican Museum, New York. The effect was immediately felt; money flowed in rapidly, and was readily expended in
 more advertising
 Such, in brief, is the history of one of the most gigantic fakes ever perpetra- ted upon the American public, the Fiji
 mermaid. Old Washingtonians have a distinct recollection of this hoax, and 0 thow the people fiocked to see what looked like mummified monkey with a fish's tail. But the humbug did not last. The fact that the mermaid busi- ness was more profitable than fan tan or the opium trade spread in China and Japan until so many Chinks were busy making mernaids that soon there came
 a glut on the market that caused even the dense and superstitious sailors to suspect fraud. Every sailor returning from the far east brought one of these munmified merfnaids home with him, and soon the objects, which in 1922 and 1S42 were the sensation of the hour, and, as Barnum himself states, were a pug gle to men of science, were as common as conch shells and cocoanuts along the
 docks of London and New York.
 Meriraids became very cheap, and sailors refused to buy more. Tn fact, the sailors, angry ever having. been de- ceived, were ready almost to mob the first Celestial who, at Hong Kong, Cam ton, Shanghai or Nagasaki, came aboard ship with ''mermaids' for sale. The one in the old Hancock tavern was brought to this city from China in 1870, or perhaps earlier, and for a time
 belonged to a groceryman of the name
 of B. W. Read, who kept store on Penn- sylvania avenue, near the corner of
 Eleventh street, and who gave it to MT. Hancock, It is, perhaps, to-day one of the very few of these objects still to be found in this country and England, an
 empty piece of nonsense, upon which the Barnum fortune was largely built.