The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum (best contemporary novels .TXT) ๐
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โHumbugโโฆ I wonโt believe it,โ is Scroogeโs response when confronted by the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, and just as surely as Dickens knows that ghosts are humbugs, so too does P. T. Barnum, writing a generation later. For Barnum, humbug begins in the Garden of Eden with the temptation of Eve, and permeates all of history, through every age and in every nation, right down to his own time, where the โGreat Spirit Postmasterโ publishes ghost letters from veterans recently perished in the Civil War.
Barnum himself was often called the โPrince of Humbugs,โ but he was no cynic. In this book he sets out to make his fellow citizens a little wiser via a catalog of colorful characters and events, and mocking commentaries about how a sensible person should be more skeptical. He goes after all kinds of classic humbugs like ghosts, witches, and spiritualists, but he also calls humbug on shady investment schemes, hoaxes, swindlers, guerrilla marketers, and political dirty tricksters, before shining a light on the patent medicines of his day, impure foods, and adulterated drinks. As a raconteur, Barnum is conversational and avuncular, sharing the wisdom of his years and opening an intimate window into the New England of the mid-19th century.
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- Author: P. T. Barnum
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This is one of the last of the remarkable incidents that we find recorded of the mighty Apollonius. How he came to his end is quite uncertain, but some veracious chroniclers declare that he simply dried up and blew away. Others aver that he lived to the good old age of ninety-seven, and then quietly gave up the ghost at Tyana, where a temple was dedicated to his memory.
However that may be, he was subsequently worshiped with divine honors, and so highly esteemed by the greatest men of after days, that even Aurelian refused to sack Tyana, out of respect to the philosopherโs ashes.
Dion Cassius, the historian, records one of the most remarkable instances of his clairvoyance or second sight. He states that Apollonius, in the midst of a discourse at Ephesus, suddenly paused, and then in a different voice, exclaimed, to the astonishment of all:โ โโHave courage, good Stephanus! Strike! strike! Kill the tyrant!โ On that same day, the hated Domitian was assassinated at Rome by a man named Stephanus. The humdrum interpretation of this โmiracleโ is simply that Apollonius had a foreknowledge of the intended attempt upon the tyrantโs life.
Long afterwards, Cagliostro claimed that he had been a fellow-traveler with Apollonius, and that his mysterious companion, the sage Athlotas, was the very same personage, who, consequently, at that time, must have reached the ripe age of some 1784 yearsโ โa lapse of time beyond the memory of even โthe oldest inhabitant,โ in these parts, at least!
EndnotesAlthough the subject of the following sketch can hardly be classed under the head of โHumbugs,โ he was an original genius, and a knowledge of some of his prominent traits seems appropriate in connection with one or two other passages of this book. โฉ
ColophonThe Humbugs of the World
was published in 1866 by
P. T. Barnum.
This ebook was produced for
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Paul King,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2008 by
Julia Miller and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Coming Events Cast Their Shadows Before,
a painting completed in 1871 by
Charles Caleb Ward.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
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