The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕
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“Humbug … I won’t believe it,” is Scrooge’s 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 “Great Spirit Postmaster” publishes ghost letters from veterans recently perished in the Civil War.
Barnum himself was often called the “Prince of Humbugs,” 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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When the great blacking-maker of London dispatched his agent to Egypt to write on the pyramids of Ghiza, in huge letters, “Buy Warren’s Blacking, 30 Strand, London,” he was not “cheating” travelers upon the Nile. His blacking was really a superior article, and well worth the price charged for it, but he was “humbugging” the public by this queer way of arresting attention. It turned out just as he anticipated, that English travelers in that part of Egypt were indignant at this desecration, and they wrote back to the London Times (every Englishman writes or threatens to “write to the Times,” if anything goes wrong,) denouncing the “Goth” who had thus disfigured these ancient pyramids by writing on them in monstrous letters: “Buy Warren’s Blacking, 30 Strand, London.” The Times published these letters, and backed them up by several of those awful, grand and dictatorial editorials peculiar to the great “Thunderer,” in which the blacking-maker, “Warren, 30 Strand,” was stigmatized as a man who had no respect for the ancient patriarchs, and it was hinted that he would probably not hesitate to sell his blacking on the sarcophagus of Pharaoh, “or any other”—mummy, if he could only make money by it. In fact, to cap the climax, Warren was denounced as a “humbug.” These indignant articles were copied into all the Provincial journals, and very soon, in this manner, the columns of every newspaper in Great Britain were teeming with this advice: “Try Warren’s Blacking, 30 Strand, London.” The curiosity of the public was thus aroused, and they did “try” it, and finding it a superior article, they continued to purchase it and recommend it to their friends, and Warren made a fortune by it. He always attributed his success to his having “humbugged” the public by this unique method of advertising his blacking in Egypt! But Warren did not cheat his customers, nor practice “an imposition under fair pretences.” He was a humbug, but he was an honest upright man, and no one called him an impostor or a cheat.
When the tickets for Jenny Lind’s first concert in America were sold at auction, several businessmen, aspiring to notoriety, “bid high” for the first ticket. It was finally knocked down to “Genin, the hatter,” for $225. The journals in Portland (Maine) and Houston (Texas), and all other journals throughout the United States, between these two cities, which were connected with the telegraph, announced the fact in their columns the next morning. Probably two millions of readers read the announcement, and asked, “Who is Genin, the hatter?” Genin became famous in a day. Every man involuntarily examined his hat, to see if it was made by Genin; and an Iowa editor declared that one of his neighbors discovered the name of Genin in his old hat and immediately announced the fact to his neighbors in front of the Post Office. It was suggested that the old hat should be sold at auction. It was done then and there, and the Genin hat sold for fourteen dollars! Gentlemen from city and country rushed to Genin’s store to buy their hats, many of them willing to pay even an extra dollar, if necessary, provided they could get a glimpse of Genin himself. This singular freak put thousands of dollars into the pocket of “Genin, the hatter,” and yet I never heard it charged that he made poor hats, or that he would be guilty of an “imposition under fair pretences.” On the contrary, he is a gentleman of probity, and of the first respectability.
When the laying of the Atlantic Telegraph was nearly completed, I was in Liverpool. I offered the company one thousand pounds sterling ($5,000) for the privilege of sending the first twenty words over the cable to my Museum in New York—not that there was any intrinsic merit in the words, but that I fancied there was more than $5,000 worth of notoriety in the operation. But Queen Victoria and “Old Buck” were ahead of me. Their messages had the preference, and I was compelled to “take a back seat.”
By thus illustrating what I believe the public will concede to be the sense in which the word “humbug” is generally used and understood at the present time, in this country as well as in England, I do not propose that my letters on this subject shall be narrowed down to that definition of the word. On the contrary, I expect to treat of various fallacies, delusions, and deceptions in ancient and modern times, which, according to Webster’s definition, may be called “humbugs,” inasmuch as they were “impositions under fair pretences.”
In writing of modern humbugs, however, I shall sometimes have occasion to give the names of honest and respectable parties now living, and I felt it but just that the public should fully comprehend my doctrine, that a man may, by common usage, be termed a “humbug,” without by any means impeaching his integrity.
Speaking of “blacking-makers,” reminds me that one of the first sensationists in advertising whom I remember to have seen, was Mr. Leonard Gosling, known as “Monsieur Gosling, the great French blacking-maker.” He appeared in New York in 1830. He flashed like a meteor across the horizon; and before he had been in the city three months, nearly everybody had heard of “Gosling’s Blacking.” I well remember his magnificent “four in hand.” A splendid team of blood bays, with long black tails, was managed with such dexterity by Gosling himself, who was a great “whip,” that they almost seemed to fly. The carriage was emblazoned with the words “Gosling’s Blacking,” in large gold
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