The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-10-20

III tuis udy VI SIupcuuOuS lanes duO
fakirs. when the mighty Captain kidds
of finance go buccaneering here ant
there in quest of our dollars. it is
meet and proper that we should pause
at least for a second. to drop a rever,
entail tear in memory of our dear old
friend. Phineas Taylor's Barnum, OF
Connecticut.
For be it remembered that Barnum
was the Prince of Fakirs and the pio-
neer of American humbuggery, and
that people actually felt it was priv
ilege to be bamboozled by him.
Nor was this ancient product of the
Wooden Nutmeg state mere local
celebrity. for he hoisted the skull and
cross-bones. crossed the Atlantic and
even plundered Great Britain and the
continent of their tightly-squeezed
shekels
To do that takes an artist. and such
was Snowman Phineas Taylor Bar
mum. Indeed. it is hardly probable
despite your Cassie Chadwicks. An
drew Carnegies, Thomas Lawsons and
John d. Rockefellers-that We shall
ever look upon his like again. for Bar
mum. after getting peoples money. left
them smilingly satisfied.
His motto was "quid pro Quo"-that
is to say he never took anything with
out giving something in return. AS Il
general proposition. the something
was spurious. but so nearly did it
represent what it purported to be, that
folks were better satisfied than if
they had received the real thing.
This younger generation of ours
does Phineas Taylor Barnum grave
injustice. They associate his name
exclusively with circuses. whereas our
imperial fakir was enjoying interna-
tional celebrity long before he began
investing much of his money in can
vas and menageries.
Primarily he was museum eXhib-
itor. though he turned his hand at so
many tricks that it is hard to say just
what was his speciality. If one will
read the autobiography OF this shrewd
Yankee. one will see that he was born
tricky. and that he died tricky. al
though it must be admitted that his
sins were of the venial sort. and sure
ly deserve to be forgiven
The worst that Barnum did was to
fool public that wanted to be fooled
and that enjoyed being faxed as much
as the fakir enjoyed the humbugging
process.
Moreover, it must be confessed with
blush or two that whenever fraud
was practiced on the public by our
Connecticut friend. the American
press was 'particeps criminis," for
Barnum was a great believer in print
er's ink. and. what is more, he saw
that editors never lacked for dead
head tickets.
Along about the fifties-yes, even
before that-Barnum's was a name to
conjure with. Even then everybody
knew him for a fakir and smiled at
the mention of his patronymic. yet
risked dollar or so to see what par
ticular direction his fakery would
take.
The man was irresistible and ire
pressible. for there was no telling
what form his ingenuity would as
sumo. His wits did business in every
cline: he could fool the best OF 'em
from every nationality
From Connecticut to Havana he was
known and suspected of trickery, yet
always able to wiring dollars from his
acquaintances. His name was on al
most every tongue in New York, Lon
don and Paris, and when his attrac-
lions failed to draw. there was some
thing radically amiss with the com
munity in which he landed
Barnum was man who used his
head and had a remarkable faculty for
recognizing opportunities. He arous-
ed Great Britain from a strange state
of coma when he procured an option
on the house in which Shakespeare
was born and prepared to remove it in
sections to his museum in New York
Had the secret of his project not
leaked out and several English gentle
men interfered and purchased the
property for the Shakespearean asso-
citation. Gotham perhaps would have
the house today, and John Bull would
still be bruised with modification al
the thought of it.
Barnum tearfully mentions the Incl
dent in his book, and expresses heart
felt regret that he failed to keep his
scheme dark. Had they slept a few
days longer" says he most dolefully,
should have made rare specula-
ton. for l was subsequently assured
that the British people. rather than
suffer that house to be removed to
America. would have bought me off
with twenty thousand pounds"
With Barnum behind him or her,
any man or woman could have become
famous, for the prince of fakirs was
marvelously magnetic advertiser.
Nothing could befuddle or embarrass
him; all was grist for this MILL In
former letter have told how he
brought Jenny Lind to America and
cleaned up fabulous fortune with
the Swedish nightingale"
Now it is the purpose of this chroni-
cler to relate how Barnum took hold
of much smaller individual ana
made gigantic success of him. The
person in question was Charles Sher-
wood Stratton. of Bridgeport, Conn.,,
more Familiarity known as General
Tom Thumb" the dwarf.
AS the encyclopedias have an in
variably amiable way of emitting all
reference to odd people about whom
we really care to learn something, it
is difficult to procure much informa-
ton about this remarkable midget,
though it appears he was born in 1888
and died in 1883.
When General Tom" was fourteen
years old he weighed only sixteen
pounds and as grown man he was