 Chapter 16 of the Humbugs of the World This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eddie Winter The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum Spiritualist Humbugs Waking Up Foster Heard From S. B. Britton Heard From The Boston Artists and Their Spiritual Portraits The Washington Medium and His Spiritual Hands The Davenport Brothers and The Sea Captain's Wheat Flower The Davenport Brothers Roughly Shown Up by John Bull Howard Schingle Stumped the Spirits Chapter 16 I hear from spiritualists sometimes. These gentry are much exercised in their minds by my letters about them, and some of them fly out at me very much as bumblebees do at one who stirs up their nest. For instance, I received not long ago from my good friends Mrs. Caldwell and Whitney an anonymous letter to them dated at Washington, and suggesting that if I would attend what the letter calls a seance of that celebrated Humbug Foster, I should see something that I could not explain. This anonymous letter, as I know by a spiritual communication, or otherwise, is in a handwriting very wonderfully like that of Mr. Foster himself. And as for the substance of it, it is very likely that Foster has now gotten up some new tricks. He needs them. The exhibiting mediums must, of course, contrive new tricks, as fast as Dr. Fond Fleck and men like him show up their old ones. It is the universal method of all sorts of imposters to adopt new means of fooling people when their old ones are exposed. And Mr. Foster shall have all the attention he wants if I ever find the leisure to bestow on him, though my time is fully occupied with worthy objects. I've also been complimented with a buzz and an attempt to sting from my old friend, S.B. Britain, the ex-universalist minister, the very surprisingly efficient man Friday of Andrew Jackson Davis in the production of the revelations of the said Davis, and also ghost fancia in general, who has gently aired part of his vocabulary in a communication to the banner of light with a heading exposed for two shillings. I can afford very well to expose friend Britain and his spiritualist humbugs for two shillings. Yonester the Cheaper. It evidently vexes the spiritualists to have their ghosts put with the monkeys in the museum. They can't help it, though, and it is my deliberate opinion that the monkeys are much the most respectable. I have no wish to displease any honest person, but the more the spiritualists squirm and snarl and scold and call me names, the more they show that I am hurting them. Or does my friend Britain himself want an engagement at the museum? Will he produce some manifestations there and get that five hundred dollars? The money is ready. A valued friend of mine has furnished me a pleasant and true narrative of a fine spiritual humbug which took place in a respectable Massachusetts village not very long ago. I'll give the story in his own graphic words. Two artists of Boston tired of the atmosphere of their studios resolved themselves in joint session into spiritual mediums as a means of raising the wind, or the devil, and of getting a little fresh air in the rural districts. One of them had learned Mansfield's trick of answering communications and that of writing on the arms. They had large handbills printed, announcing that Mr. W. Howard, the celebrated test medium, would visit the town and would remain at the hotel during three days. One of the artists proceeded the other by a few hours, engaged drums and attended to country preliminaries. Mr. Howard, Don DeWight-Choker, put his hair behind his ears and mounted a pair of plain glass spectacles, and such was his profoundly spiritual appearance on entering his apartment at the hotel, that he had to lock the door and give his partner opportunity to explode and absolutely roll about on the floor with laughter. Well, they rigged a clothes horse for a screen, and to heighten the effect, the assistant who was expert in portraiture covered this screen and indeed the walls of the room with craggy outlines of the human countenance upon large sheets of paper. These, they said, were executed by the draftsman whose right hand went under spiritual influence uncontrollably jerked off these likenesses. They added that the spirits had given information that, before the mediums left town, the people would recognise these pictures as likenesses of persons they had deceased within twenty years or so, price, two dollars each. They absolutely sold quite a large number of these portraits, as they were, from time to time, recognised by surviving friends. The operation of drawing portraits was also illustrated at certain hours, admission fifty cents, if not satisfactory the money returned. Other tricks of various kinds were performed with pleasure to all parties, and profit to the performers. The artists stood it as long as they could, and then departed, but there was every indication that the townspeople would have stood it until this day. As far my friend's curious and truthful account. A little while ago there was exhibiting at Washington a test medium whose name I would print were it not that I do not want to advertise him. One of his most impressive feats was to call spiritual hands and other parts of the human frame to appear in the air, our Lord Davenport Brothers. A gentleman whose name I also know very well indeed, but have particular reasons for not mentioning, went one day to see this test medium, along with a friend, and asked to see a hand. Certainly the medium said, and the room was darkened, and the circle made round the table in the usual manner. After about five minutes my friend, who had contrived to place himself pretty near the medium, saw, sure enough, a dim, glimmering blue light in the air, a foot or so before and above the head of the medium. In a minute he could see dimly outlined in this blue light the form of a hand, back towards him fingered together, and no thumb. Why is no thumb visible, asked my friend, of the medium in a solemn manner. The reason is, said the medium, still more solemnly, that the spirits have not power enough to produce a whole hand, and so they exhibit as much as they can. And do they always show hands without thumbs? Yes. Here my friend, with a sudden jump, grabbed for the place where the rest of the mysterious hand ought to be. Strange to elate, he caught it, and held it stoutly too. A light was quickly had, when, still stranger, the spirit hand was clearly seen to be the fleshy pour of the medium, and a fat pour it was too. Mr. Medium took the metal with the coolness of a thorough rascal, and, lighting a cigar, merely observed, well, gentlemen, you needn't trouble yourselves to come here any more. He also insisted on his usual fee of five dollars, until threatened with a prosecution for swindling. The secret of this worthy gentleman is simple and soon told. Holding one hand up in the air, he held up with the other, between the thumb and finger, a little pinch of phosphorus and bisulfide of carbon, which gave the blue light. If inconvenient to hold up the other hand, he had a reserved pinch of the blue light, under that invisible thumb. It is a curious instance of the thorough credulity of genuine spiritualists, that a believer in this wretched rogue, on being circumstantially told this whole story, not only steadily and firmly refused to credit it, and continued his faith in the fellow, but absolutely would not go to see the application of any other test. That's the sort of follower that is worth having. Another case was witnessed as follows, by the very same person on whose authority I give the spirit hand story. He was present, also this time in Washington, as it happened, as an exhibition by a certain pair of spiritual brothers, since well known as the Devonport Brothers. These chaps, after the fashion of their kind, cause themselves to be tied up in a rope, and old to see kept in tying them. This done, their shop, or cabinet, was shut upon them as usual, and the bangs showing of sticks, et cetera, through a window and the like, took place. Well, this sly and inconvenient old sea captain, now slipped out of the hall a few minutes, and came back with some wheat flour. Having tied up their brothers again, he remarked, Now gentlemen, please to take each, your two hands full of wheat flour. The brothers got mad and flatly refused. Then they called down and argued, saying it wouldn't make any difference and was of no use. Well, said the ancient mariner, if it won't make any difference, you can just as well do it, can't you? The audience, seeing the point, were so evidently pleased with the old sailor, that the grumbling brothers, though with a very bad grace, took their fists full of flour, and were shut up. There is not the least sign of a manifestation, no more than if the wheat flour had shot the brothers dead in their tracks. The audience were immensely delighted. The brothers, since that time, have learned to perform some tricks with flour in their fists, but only when tied by their own friends. Since these facts came to my knowledge, the Davenport brothers have suffered an unpleasant exposure in Liverpool in England, the details of which have been kindly afforded to me by attentive friends there. The circumstances in question occurred on the evenings of Tuesday on Wednesday, February the 14th and 15th, 1865. On the first of these evenings a gentleman named Cummins, selected by the audience as one of the tying committee, tied one of the brothers, and a Mr. Hully, the other committee man, the other. But the brothers saw instantly that they could not wriggle out of these knots. They therefore refused to let the tying be finished, saying that it was brutal, although a surgeon present said it was not. One tied brother was untied by Ferguson, the agent, and then the brothers went to work and performed their various tricks without the supervision of any committee, but amid a constant fire of derision laughter grown shouts and epithets from the audience. On the next evening the audience insisted on having the same committee. The brothers were very reluctant to allow it, but had to do so after a long time. Ira Davenport refused to gain, however, instantly to be tied, as soon as he saw what not Mr. Cummins was going to use. Cummins, however, though Ira scorned most industriously, had him tied fast, and then Ira called to Ferguson to cut the knot. Ferguson did so, and cut Ira's hand. Ira now showed the blood to the audience, and the brothers, with an immense pretense of indignation, went off the stage. Cummins at once explained, the audience became disgusted and enraged at the impudence of the imposture, broke over the footlights, knocked Ferguson backwards into the cabinet, and when the discomfited agent had scrambled out and run away, smashed the thing fairly into Kinling Wood, and cut it off, all distributed into splinters and chips. Early next morning the terrified Davenport ran away out of Liverpool, and a number of the audience were, at last accounts, intending to go to Lord to get back the money paid for an exhibition, which they did not see. The very thorough exposure of the Davenport thus made it an additional proof, if such were needed, of the truth of what I have alleged about the impostures perpetrated by them and their mysterious brethren of the exhibit in Salt. Once the spirits were stumped with a shingle, a very proper Yankee jawbone of an ass to rout such disembodied Philistines. One day a certain person was present, where some tables were rambling about, and other revelations taken place in the furniture business, when he stepped boldly forth like a held bearing defiance, and cast down a common white pine shingle upon the floor. There said he coolly, if you can trot those tables about in that style, do it with that shingle. Make it go about the room, make it move an inch, and lo and behold, the shingle lay perfectly still. End of Chapter 16 The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eddie Winter The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum The Davenport brothers shown up once more. Dr. Newton at Chicago. The Spiritualist bogus baby. A lady brings forth a motive force. Gum Arabic. Spiritualist Hebrew. The Allen Boy. Dr. Randall. Portland Evening Courier. The Fools Not All Dead Yet. Chapter 17 Other spiritual facts have come to my hand. Some of them furnishing additional details about persons to whom I have already alluded, and others being important to illustrate some general tendencies of spiritualism. And first about the Davenport brothers. They have met with another awful exposure at the hands of a merciless Mr. Addison. This gentleman is a London stockbroker, and his cool, sharp business habits seem to have stood him in good stead in taking some fun out of the fools who follow the Davenports. Mr. Addison, it seems, went to work, and, just to amuse his friends, executed all the Davenport tricks. Upon this, the Spiritualist newspapers in England, which, like the Boston Held of Progress, claimed to believe in the brothers, came out and said that Addison was a very wonderful medium indeed. On this, the cold-blooded Addison once printed a letter in which he not only said he had done all their tricks without spiritual aid, but he moreover explained exactly how he caught the Davenports in their impositions. He and a long-legged friend went to one of the dark sounds of the Davenports, during which musical instruments were to fly about, of the heads of the audience, bang their pates, swam, twang, etc. Addison and his friend took a front seat. As soon as the lights were put out, they put out their legs too, stretching as far as possible, and to use the unfeeling language of Mr. Addison, they soon had the satisfaction of feeling someone falling over them. They then caught hold of an arm, from which a guitar was forthright let drop on the floor. In order to be certain who the guitar carrier was, they waited until the next time the lights were put out, took each a mouthful of dry flour, and blew it out right among the manifestations. When the lumps were lighted, lo and behold, there was Faye, the agent, and manager of the Davenports, with his back all powdered with flour. Addison showed this to an acquaintance, who said, yes, he saw the flour, but he could not understand what made Addison and his friend laugh so excessively at it. The spiritualist newspapers don't think Addison is so great a medium, as they did. Great accounts have recently come eastward from Chicago of a certain Dr. Newton, who is said to be working miracles by the hundred in the way of healing diseases. This man operates with exactly the weapons of all the miracle workers, quacks and imposters ancient and modern use. All of them have appealed to the imagination of their patients, and no person acquainted with mental philosophy is ignorant that many a sick man has been cured either by medicine and imagination together or by imagination alone. Therefore, even if this Newton should really be the cause of the recovery of some persons from their ailments, it would be no more a miracle than if Dr. Mott should do it. Nor would Newton be any less a quack and a humbug. Newton has operated at the east already. He had a career at Newhaven and Hartford and in other places before he steered westward in the wake of the Star of Empire. What he does is simply to ask what is the matter and where it hurts. Then he sticks his thumb into the seat of the difficulty, or he pokes or strokes or pats it, as the case may be. Then he says, there, you're cured. God bless you. Take yourself off. Chicago must be a credulous place, for we are informed of immense crowds besieging this man and undergoing his manipulations. One of the Chicago papers have a little faith and a good deal of fun, which in such cases is much better, published some burlesque stories and certificates about Dr. Newton, some of them humorous enough. There is a certificate from a woman with 14 children, all having the measles at once. She says that no sooner had Dr. Newton received one lock of hair of one of them than the measles left them all and she now has said measles caught up in a bottle. Another case was that of a merchant who had lost his strength but went and was stroked by Newton and the very next day was able to lift a note in bank, which had before been altogether too heavy for him. There is also an old lady who still, I fear, was imitated from Hood's funny conceit of the deaf woman who pulled to near Trumpet, which was so effective that the very next day she heard from her husband in Botany Bay. The Chicago old lady, in like manner, after having Dr. Newton's thumbs dropped into her ears certifies that she heard next morning from her son in California. One would think that this ridicule would put the learned Dr. Newton to flight, but it will not until he is through with the falls. I've already given an account of some of the messages from the other world in the banner of light in which some of the spirits explain that they have turned into women since they died. This is by no means the first remarkable trick that the spirits have performed upon the human organization. Here is what they did at High Rock in Massachusetts a number of years ago. It beat Joanna Southcott in funny absurdity, if not in blasphemy. At High Rock in the year 1854 or thereabouts, certain spiritualist people were building some mysterious machinery. While this was in process of erection, a female medium of considerable eminence in those parts was informed by certain spirits with some solemnity and pomp that she would become the Mary of a new dispensation. That is, she was going to be a mother. Well, this was all proper no doubt, and the lady herself, so say the spiritualist accounts, had for some time experienced indications that she was pregnant. These indications continued and became increasingly obvious, and also it was observed a little queer in some particulars. After a while, one spear, a reverend Mr Spear, who was mixed up, it appears, with the machinery part of the business and who was a medium himself, transmitted to the lady a request from the spirits that she would visit said spear at High Rock on a certain day. She did so, of course, and while there was unexpectedly taken with the pains of childbirth, which the spiritualist authorities say were internal, where should they be prey? End of the spirit rather than of the physical nature, but were nevertheless quite as uncontrollable as those of the letter and not less severe. The labour proceeded. It lasted two hours. As it went on, lo and behold, one part and another part of the machinery began to move, and when at the end of the two hours the partition was safely over, all the machinery was going. The lady had given birth to a motive force. Does anybody suppose I am manufacturing this story? Not a bit of it. It is all told at length in a book published by a spiritualist, and probably a good many of my readers will remember about it. Well, the baby had to be nursed, fact. This superhumanly silly female actually went through the motions of nursing the motive force for some weeks. Though how the thing sucked, excuse me ladies, I would not discuss such delicate subjects, did not the interests of truth require it. If I had been the physician at any rate, I think I should have recommended to hire a healthy female steam engine for a wet nurse to this young motive force, say a locomotive for instance. I feel sure the thing would have lived if it could have had a gage faucet or something of that sort to draw on. But the medical folks in charge chose to permit the mother to nurse the child, and she, not being able to supply proper nourishment, the poor little innocent faded, if that word be appropriate for what couldn't be seen. And finally, Ginny out, and the machinery after some abortive juggles and turns stood hopelessly still. This story is true, that is, it is true that the story was told, the pretenses were gone through, and the birth was actually believed by a good many people. Some of them were prodigiously enthusiastic about it, and called the invisible brat the new motive power, the physical saviour, heaven's last best gift to man, the new creation, the great spiritual revelation of the age, the philosopher's stone, the act of all acts, and so on and so forth. The great question of all was, who is the daddy? I don't know if anybody's asking this question, but its importance is extreme and obvious. For if things like this are going to happen, the ladies will be afraid to sleep alone in the house, if so much as a sewing machine or apple-cora be about, and will not dare take solitary walks along any stream, where there is water power. A couple of miscellaneous anecdotes may not inappropriately be appended to the story of monstrous delusion. Once a writing medium was producing sentences in various foreign languages. One of these was Arabic, an enthusiastic youth, a half-believer, after inspecting the wondrous scroll, handed it to his seat-mate, a professor, as it happened, in one of our oldest colleges, and a man of real learning. The professor scrutinised the document. What was the youth's delight to hear him at last observe gravely? It is a kind of Arabic, sure enough. What kind, asked the young man with intense interest? Gamma Arabic, said the professor. The spirit of the Prophet Daniel came one night into the apartment of a medium named Fowler, and right before his eyes, he said, wrote down some marks on a piece of paper. These were shown to the Reverend George Bush, professor of Hebrew in the New York University, who said that they were a few verses from the last chapter of Daniel and were learnedly written. Bush was a spiritualist, as well as a professor of Hebrew, and the altar of known better than to indulge spirit Hebrew, for shortly there came others, who, to use a rustic phrase, took the rag of the Bush. These inconvenient personages were three or four persons of learning, one a Jew, who proved that the document was an attempt to copy the verses in question by someone so ignorant of Hebrew as not to know that it is written backward, that is, from right to left. During the last few months a boy in medium by the name of Henry B. Allen, 13 years of age, has been astonishing people in various parts of the country by physical manifestations in the light. The exhibitions of this precocious youngster have been managed by a Dr Randall, who also lectures upon spiritualism, expounding its beautiful philosophy. For a number of weeks this couple held forth in Boston, sometimes giving several silences during the day, not more than 30 being allowed to attend at one time. Each of them were required to pay an admission fee of one dollar. The banner of light fully endorsed this Allen boy, and gave lengthy accounts of his manifestations. The arrangements for his exhibitions were very simple. A dulcimer, guitar, bell, and small drum being placed on a sofa or several chairs set against the wall, a clotheshorse was set in front of them and covered with a blanket which came to the floor. To obtain manifestations a person was required to take off his coat and sit with his back to the clotheshorse. The medium then took a seat close to and facing the investigator's left side and grasped the left arm of the letter on the underside above the elbow. With his, the medium's, right hand and near the wrist with the other hand, the manager then covered with a coat the arms and left shoulder of the medium, including the left arm of the investigator. The medium soon commenced to wriggle and twist. The manager said he was always nervous under influence and worked the coat away from the position in which it had been placed. Taking his right hand from the investigator's arm he readjusted the coat and availed himself of that opportunity to get the investigator's wrist between his, the medium's, left arm and knee. That brought his left hand in such a position that with it he could grasp the investigator's arm where he had previously grasped it with his right hand. With the letter he could then reach around the edge of the clotheshorse and make a noise on the instruments. With the drumsticks he thumbed on the dulcimer, taking the guitar by the neck he could vibrate the strings and show the body of the instrument above the clotheshorse without anyone seeing his hand. All persons present were so seated that they could not see behind the clotheshorse or have a view of the medium's right shoulder. When asked why people were not allowed to occupy such a position that they could have a fair view of the instruments when sounded the manager replied that he did not exactly know but presumed it was because the magnetic emanations from the eyes of the beholders would prevent the spirits being able to move the instruments at all. What was claimed to be a spirit hand was often shown above the clotheshorse where it flickered for an instant and was withdrawn. But it was invariably a right hand with a wrist towards the medium. When the person sitting with the medium was asked if the hands of the letter had constantly hold of his arm he replied in the affirmative. Of course he felt what he supposed to be both the medium's hands but as I before explained the pressure on his wrist was from the medium's left arm the left hand of which by means of a very accommodating crook in the elbow was grasping the investigator's arm where the medium's right hand was supposed to be. From Boston the Alan Boyer went to Portland, Maine where he succeeded astonishingly till some gentleman applied the lamp black test to his assumed mediumship whereupon he came to grief. The following is copied from the Portland Daily Press of March the 21st. Exposed, the wonderful spiritual manifestations of the boy medium, Master Henry B. Allen in charge of Dr. J. H. Randall of Boston were brought to a sad end last evening by the impersonate curiosity and wicked doings of some of the gentlemen present at the seance at Congress Hall. As usual one of the company present was selected to sit at the side of the boy and allowed his hand and arm to be held by both hands of the boy while the manifestations were going on. The boy seized hold of the gentleman's wrist with his left hand and his shoulder or near it with the right hand. The manifestations then began and among them was one trick of pulling the gentleman's hair. Immediately after this trick was performed the hand of the boy was discovered to be very black from lamp black of the best quality with which the gentleman had dressed his head on purpose to detect whose was the spirit hand that pulled his hair. His shirt sleeve upon which the boy immediately replaced his hand after pulling his hair was also black where the hand had been placed. The gentleman stated the facts to the company present and the seance broke up. Dr. Randall refunded the 50 cents admission fee to those present. The spiritualists of the city were somewhat staggered by this expose but soon rallied as one of their number announced a new discovery in spiritual science. Here it is as stated by himself. Whatever the electrical or spirit hand touches will inevitably be transferred to the hand of the medium in every instance unless something occurs to prevent the full operation of the law by which this result is produced. The spirit hand being composed in part of the magnetic elements drawn from the medium when it is dissolved again and the magnetic fluid returns when it came it must of necessity carry with it whatever material substance it has touched and leave it deposited upon the surface or material hand of the medium. This is a scientific question how many innocent mediums have been wronged and the invisible have permitted it until we should discover that it was the natural result of a natural law. What a great discovery and how lucidly it is set forth. The author who by the way is editor of the Portland Evening Courier of this new discovery was not so modest but that he hastened to renounce and claim full credit for it in the columns of the banner of light the editor of which journal congratulates him on having done so much for the cause of spiritualism. Those skeptics who were present when the lamp black was transferred from the gentleman's hair to the medium's hand rashly concluded that the boy was an imposter. It remained for Mr. Hall that is the philosopher's name to make the electromagnetic transfer discovery. The Allen boy ought ever to hold him in grateful remembrance for coming to his rescue at such a critical period when the spirits would not vouchsafe an explanation that would extopate him from the grievous charge of imposter. Mr. Hall deserves a leather medal now and a substone monument when he is dead. A person whose initials are the same as the gentleman's named above once lived in Aru Stuck, Maine and was in the habit of attending spiritual circles in which he was sometimes influenced as a personating medium and to represent the symptoms of the disease which caused the controlling spirits translation to another sphere. It having been reported in Aru Stuck that a certain well-known individual living further east had died of cholera a desire was expressed at the next circle to have him manifest himself. The medium referred to above got under influence and personated with an expression of all the symptoms of cholera the gentleman who was reported to have died of that disease. So faithful to the supposed fact was a representation that the medium had to be cared for as if he was himself a veritable cholera patient. Several days after the man who was personated appeared in Aru Stuck alive and well never having been attacked with the cholera the local papers gathered a graphic account of the manifestation soon after it occurred. But to return to the alum boy after his exposure by means of the lamp black test and Mr. Hall of the Portland Even Courier had announced his new discovery in spiritual science several of the Portland spiritualists had a private sitting with a boy while he sat with his hands upon the arm of one of their number a tidy rope to his wrists and around the person's arm covering his hands in the way I have before described. After some wriggling and twisting the usual amount of nervousness the bell was heard to ring behind the clothes-horse. The boy's right hand was then examined and it was found to be stained with some coloured matter that had previously been put upon the handle of the bell. As the boy's wrists were still tired and the rope remained upon the man's arm the transfer theory was considered to be established as a fact and the previous exposure was shown to be not only no exposure at all but a stepping stone to a grand truth in spiritual science. Again and again did these persistent and infatuated spiritualists try what they call the transfer test, varying with each experiment the colouring material used and every time the bell was rung the medium's right hand was found to be stained with what had been put upon the bell handle. By having a little slack rope between his wrist and the man's arm it was not a difficult matter for the medium while his nervousness was being manifested to get hold of the bell and ring it and make sounds upon the strings of the dulcimer or guitar with a drumstick that the manager had placed at a convenient distance from his, the boy's, hand. The Portland Daily Press, in noticing a lecture against spiritualism recently delivered by Dr. Von Fleck in that city says he, Dr. V. Ray, performed the principal feats of the Ellenboy with his hands tied to the arm of the person with whom he was in communication. Horace Greeley says that if a man will be a consummate jackass and fool he is not aware of anything in the constitution to prevent it. I believe Mr. Greeley is right, and I think no one can reasonably be expected to exercise common sense unless he is known to possess it. It is quite natural, therefore, that many of the spiritualists lacking common sense should pretend to have something better. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 of The Humbugs of the World This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rosie. The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum Trade and Business Impositions, Chapter 18 Adulterations of Food, Adulterations of Liquor The Colonel's Whiskey, The Humbug Aumeter It was about eight hundred and fifty years before Christ when the young prophet cried out to his master, Elisha, over the potage of wild gourds, there is death in the pot. It was two thousand six hundred and seventy years afterward, in 1820, that Acum, the chemist, cried out over again, there is death in the pot, in the title page of a book so named, which gave almost everybody a pain in the stomach with its horrid stories of the unhelpful humbugs sold for food and drink. This excitement has been stirred up more than once since Mr. Acum's time, with some success, yet nothing is more certain than that a very large proportion of the food we eat, of the liquid we drink, always accepting good well-filtered water, and the medicines we take, not to say a word about the clothes we wear and the miscellaneous merchandise we use, is more or less adulterated with cheaper materials. Sometimes these are merely harmless. As flour, starch, anato, lard, etc., sometimes they are vigorous, destructive poisons, as red lead, arsenic, strychnine, oil of vitriol, potash, etc. It is not agreeable to find ourselves so thickly beset by humbugs, to find that we are not merely called on to see them, to hear them, to believe them, to invest capital in them, but to eat and drink them. Yet so it is, and if my short discussion of this kind of humbug shall make people a little more careful, and help them to preserve their health, I shall think myself fortunate. To begin with bread. Alum is very commonly put into it by the bakers to make it white. Flour of inferior quality, runny flour, and even that from wormy wheat, ground up worms, bugs, and all, is often mixed in as much as the case will bear. Potato flour has been known to be mixed with wheat, and so 30 years ago were plaster of Paris, bone dust, white clay, etc. But these are little used now, if at all, and the worst things in bread aside from bad flour, which is bad enough, is usually the alum. It is often put in ready mixed with salt, and it accomplishes two things, vis to make the bread white and to suck up a good deal of water and make the bread way well. It has been sometimes found that the alum was put in at the mill instead of the bakery. Milk is most commonly adulterated with cold water, and many are the jokes on the milkman about their best cow being choked, etc. by a turnip in the pump spout, their cow with the wooden tail, i.e. the pump handle, and so on. Awful stories are told about the London milkmen who are said to manufacture a fearful kind of medicine to be sold as milk, the cream being made of a quantity of calf brains beaten to a slime. Stories are told around New York too of a mysterious powder sold by drugists, which with water makes milk, but it is milk that must be used quickly, or it turns into a curious mess. But the worst adulteration of milk is to adulterate the old cow herself, as is done in the swill milk establishments, which received such an exposure a few years ago in a city paper. This milk is still furnished, and many a poor little baby is daily suffering convulsions from its effects. So difficult is it to find real milk for babies in the city that physicians often prescribe the use of what is called condensed milk instead, which, though very different from milk not evaporated, is at least made of the genuine article. A series of careful experiments to develop the milk humbug was made by a competent physician in Boston within a few years, but he found a milk there, aside from swill milk, adulterated with nothing worse than water, salt, and burnt sugar. Tea is be juggled first by John Chinaman, who is a very cunning rascal, and second by the seller here. Green and black tea are made from the same plant, but by different processes, the green being most expensive. To meet the increased demand for green tea, Master John takes immense quantities of black tea and paints it by stirring into it over a fire a fine powder of plaster Paris and Prussian blue at the rate of half a pound to each hundred pounds of tea. John also sometimes takes a very cheap kind and puts on a nice gloss by stirring it in gum water with some stove polish in it. We may imagine ourselves, after drinking this kind of tea, with a beautiful black gloss on our insides. John, moreover, manufactures vast quantities of what he plainly calls lie tea. This is dust and refuse of tea leaves and other leaves made up with dust and starch or gum into little lumps and used to adulterate better tea. Seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds of this knife stuff were imported into England in one period of eighteen months. It seems to be used in New York only for green tea. Coffee is adulterated with chicory root, which costs only about one-third as much. Dandelion root, peas, beans, mangled worsel, wheat, rye, acorns, carrots, parsnips, horse chestnuts, and sometimes with livers of horses and cattle. All these things are roasted or baked to the proper color and consistency and then mixed in. No great sympathy need be expended on those who suffer from this particular humbug, however, for when it is so easy to buy the real berry and roast or at least grind it oneself, it is our own fault if our laziness leaves us to eat all those sorts of stuff. Cocoa is extended with sugar, starch, flour, iron rust, Venetian red, grease, and various earths. But it is believed by pretty good authority that the American made preparations of cocoa are nearly or quite pure. Even if they are not, the whole bean can be used instead. Butter and lard have one-tenth and sometimes even one-quarter of water mixed up in them. It is easy to find this out by melting a sample before the fire and putting it away to cool when the humbug appears by the grease going up and the water, perhaps turbid with whey, settling below. Honey is humbugged with sugar or molasses. Sugar is not often sanded, as the old stories have it. Fine white sugar is sometimes floured pretty well, and brown sugar is sometimes made of a portion of good sugar with a cheaper kind mixed in. Inferior brown sugars are often full of a certain crab-like animal or minute bug, often visible without a microscope in water where the sugar is dissolved. It is believed that this pleasing insect sometimes gets into the skin and produces a kind of itch. I do not believe there is much danger of adulteration in good loaf or crushed white sugar or good granulated or brown sugar. Pepper is mixed with fine dust, dirt, linseed meal, ground rice, or mustard and wheat flour. Ginger with wheat flour coloured by turmeric and reinforced by cayenne. Cinnamon is sometimes not present at all in what is so called, the stuff being the inferior and cheaper cassia bark. Sometimes it is only part cassia, sometimes the humbug part of it is flour and ochre. Cayenne pepper is mixed with corn meal and salt, Venetian red, mustard, brick dust, fine saw dust and red lead, mustard with flour and turmeric. Confectionery is often poisoned with Prussian blue, Antwerp blue, Gamboge, Ultramarine, chrome yellow, red lead, white lead, vermilion, Brunswick green, and Shields green or arsenite of copper. Never buy any confectionery that is coloured or painted. Vinegar is made of whiskey or of oil of vitriol. Pickles have vertigree in them to make them a pretty green. Pretty green he must be who will eat bought pickles. Preserved fruits often have vertigree in them too. An awful list. Imagine a meal of such bewitched food where the actual articles are named. Take some of the alum bread, have a cup of pea soup and chicory coffee. I'll trouble you for the oil of vitriol, if you please. Have some sawdust on your meat, or do you prefer this flour and turmeric mustard? A piece of this vertigree preserved gooseberry pie, madam? Won't you put a few more sugar bugs in your ash leaf tea? Do you prefer black tea or Prussian blue tea? Do you like your tea with swill milk or without? I have not left myself space to speak of the tricks played by the drugists and the liquor dealers, but I propose to devote another chapter exclusively to the adulteration of liquors in this country. It is a subject so fearful and so important that nothing less than a chapter can do it justice. I must now end with a story or two, and a suggestion or two. Old Colonel P. sold much whiskey, and his manner was to sell by sample out of a pure barrel overnight at a marvellous cheap rate, and then to rectify before mourning under pretense of coopering and marking. Certain persons having a grudge against the Colonel once made an arrangement with a carman who executed their plan thus. He went to the Colonel and asked to see whiskey. The jolly old fellow took him downstairs and showed him a great seller full. Carmen samples a barrel. Fuss rate, Colonel, how do you sell it? Colonel names his price on the rectified basis. Well, Colonel, how much you got? So many barrels, two or three hundred. Colonel, here's your money. I'll take the lot. All right, says Colonel P. There's some coopering to be done on it. Some of the hoops and heads are very little loose. You shall have it all in the morning. No, Colonel, we'll roll it right out this minute. My trucks are up there already. And sure enough, he had a string of a dozen or more brigaded in the street. The Colonel was sadly dumbfounded. He turned several colors, red mostly, stammered, made excuses. It was no go. The whiskey was the customers and the game was up. The humbugged old humbug finally came down and bought his man off by paying him several hundred dollars. There is a much older and better known story about a grocer who was a deacon and who was heard to call downstairs before breakfast to his clerk. John, have you watered the rum? Yes, sir. And sanded the sugar? Yes, sir. And dusted the pepper? Yes, sir. And chicoryed the coffee? Yes, sir. Then come up to prayers. Let us hope that the grocers of the present day, while they adulterate less, do not pray less. Between 1851 and 1854, Mr. Wakeley of the London Lancet gave an awful roasting to the adulteration interest in London. He employed an able analyzer who began by going about without telling what he was at and buying a great number of samples of all kinds of food, drugs, etc., at a great number of shops. Then he analyzed them. And when he found humbug in any sample, he published the facts and the seller's name and place of business. It may be imagined what a terrible row this kicked up. Very numerous and violent threats were made, but the Lancet was never once sued by any of the aggrieved, for it had told the truth. Perhaps some discouraged reader may ask, What can I eat? Well, I don't pretend to direct people's diet. Ask your doctor if you can't find out. But I will suggest that there are a few things that can't be adulterated. You can't adulterate an egg, nor an oyster, nor an apple, nor a potato, nor a salt codfish, and if they are spoiled they will notify you themselves. And when good, they are all good healthy food. In short, one good safeguard is to use, as far as you can, things with their life in them when you buy them, whether vegetable or animal. The next best rule against these adulteration humbugs is to buy goods crude instead of manufactured, coffee and pepper and spices, etc., whole instead of ground, for instance. Thus, though you give more work, you buy purity with it. And lastly, there are various chemical processes and the microscope to detect adulterations, and milk in particular may always be tested by a lactometer, a simple little instrument which the milkmen use which costs a few shillings and which tells the story in an instant. It is a glass bulb with a stem above and a scale on it and a weight below. In good average milk at 60 degrees of heat, the lactometer floats at 20 on its scale, and in poorer milk at from that figure down. If it floats at 15, the milk is one fourth water. If at 10, one half. It would be a wonderful thing for mankind if some philosophic Yankee would contrive some sort of ommeter that would measure the infusion of humbug in anything, a humbug ommeter he might call it. I would warrant him a good sale. End of Chapter 18. Recording by Rosie Chapter 19 of The Humbugs of the World This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rosie. The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum. Adulterations and drinks. Riding home on your wine barrel. List of things to make rum. Things to color it with. Canal boat hash. English adulteration law. Effects of drugs used. How to use them. Buying liquors under the custom house lock. A homeopathic dose. As long as the people of the United States tipple down rum and other liquors at the rate of a good deal more than 100 million gallons a year, besides what is imported and what is called imported, as long as they pay for their tippling a good deal more than 50 millions and probably over 100 millions of dollars a year, so long it will be a great object to manufacture false liquors and sell them at the price of true ones. When liquor of good quality costs from 4 to 15 dollars a gallon and an imitation can be had that tastes just as good and has just as much jizzam in it and probably a good deal more for from 25 cents to 1 dollar a gallon, somebody will surely make and sell that imitation. Adulterating and imitating liquors is a very large business, and I don't know of anybody who will deny that this particular humbug is very extensively cultivated. There are a great many people, however, who will talk about it as they do in western towns about fever and ague. We don't do anything of the kind here, but those people over there do. There is very little pure liquor, either malt or spiritus, to be obtained in any way. The more you pay for it as a rule, the more the public in gains. But what you drink is none the purer. Importing don't help you. Port is, or used to be, for very little is now made comparatively, imitated in immense quantities at Oporto, and in the log wood trade, the European winemakers competed with the dyers. It is a London proverb that if you want genuine port wine you have to go to Oporto and make your own wine, and then ride on the barrel all the way home. It is perhaps possible to get pure wine in France by buying it at the vineyard, but if any dealer has had it, give up the idea. As for what is done this side of the water, now for it, I do not rely upon the old work of Mr. Death in the Potta Cume, printed some thirty years ago in England. My statements come mostly from a New York book put forth within a few years by a New York man, whose name is now in the directory and whose business is said to consist, to a great extent in furnishing one kind or another of the queer stuff he talks about, to brewers or distillers or wine and brandy merchants. This gentleman in a sweet alphabetical miscellany of drugs, herbs, minerals, and groceries commonly used in manufacturing our best old bourbon whiskey, swan gin, Madeira wine, pale ale, London brown stout, hide-sake, hide-sec, clico, laffit, and other nice drinks, names the chief of such ingredients as follows, aloes, alum, calamus, flag root, capsicum, cocculus indicus, copperus, coriander seed, gentian root, ginger, grains of paradise, honey, licorice, logwood, molasses, onions, opium, orange peel, cassia, salt, stromonium seed, deadly nightshade, sugar of lead, sulfite of soda, sulfuric acid, tobacco, turpentine, vitriol, yarrow. I have left strict nine out of the list as some persons have doubts about this poison ever being used in adulterating liquors. A wholesale liquor dealer in New York City, however, assures me that more than one half of the so-called whiskey is poisoned with it. Besides these 27 kinds of rum, here come 23 more articles used to put the right color to it when it is made, by making a soup of one or another and stirring it in at the right time. I alphabet these, too. Alkinet root, annatto, barwood, blackberry, blue vitriol, brazilwood, burnt sugar, coquineal, elderberry, guaranteeing an extractive matter, indigo, nicaragua wood, orcal, pokeberry, potash, kercitron, red beet, red cabbage, red carrots, saffron, sanderswood, turmeric, wortelberry. And all, in both lists, just fifty. There are more, however, but that's enough. Now then, my friend, what did you drink this morning? You called it bourbon or cognac, or old otard, very likely, but what was it? The glorious uncertainty of drinking liquor under these circumstances is enough to make a man's head swim without his getting drunk at all. There might, perhaps, be found a consolation like that of the Western traveller about the hash. When I travel in a canal boat, or steamboat, quote this brave and stout stomached man, I always eat the hash because then I know what I've got. It was a good many years ago that the Parliament of England found it necessary to make a law to prevent sophisticated malt liquors. Here is a list of things they forbid to put into beer. Molasses, honey, liquorish, vitriol, cassia, cocculus indicus, grains of paradise, guinea pepper, opium. The penalty was $1,000 fine on the brewer and $2,500 on the drugist who supplied him. I know of no such law in this country. The theory of our government leaves people to take care of themselves as much as possible, but now let us see what some of these fifty ingredients will do. Beaten carrots, honey and liquorish, orange peel and molasses, will not do much harm, though I should think tipplers would prefer them as the customer at the eating house preferred his flies on a separate plate. But the case is different with cocculus indicus and strimonium and sulfuric acid and sugar of lead and the like. I take the following accounts so far as they are medical from a standard work by Dr. Dungleson. Allows is a cathartic, cocculus indicus contains picrotoxin, which is an acrid narcotic poison, from five to ten grains will kill a strong dog. The boys often call it coccal cinders. They pound it and mix it in dough and throw it into the water to catch fish. The poor fish eat it, soon become delirious, whirling and dancing furiously about on the top of the water, and then die. Copperus tends to produce nausea, vomiting, griping and purging. Grains of paradise, a large kind of cardamom, is strongly heating and carminative, i.e. anti-flatulent and anti-spasmodic. Opium is known well enough. Strimonium seed would seem to have been made on purpose for the liquor business. In moderate doses it is a powerful narcotic producing vertigo, headache, dimness, or perversion of vision, i.e. seeing double, and confusion of thought. NB, what else does liquor do? In larger doses, still like liquor, you obtain these symptoms aggravated and then a delirium, sometimes whimsical, snakes in your boots, and sometimes furious, a stupor, convulsions, and death. A fine drink this strimonium? Sugar of lead is what is called a cumulative poison. Having the quality of remaining in the system when taken in small quantities and piling itself up as it were, until there is enough to accomplish something, when it causes debility, paralysis, and other things. Sulfuric acid is strongly corrosive, a powerful caustic attacking the teeth even when very dilute, eating up flesh and bones alike when strong enough, and, if taken in a large enough dose, an awfully tearing and agonizing fatal poison. The way to use these delectable nutrients is in part as follows. Stir a little sulfuric acid into your beer. This will give you a fine, old ale in about a quarter of a minute. Take a mixture of alum, salt, and copperus, ground fine, and stir into your beer, and this will make it froth handsomely. Cocholous Indicus, tobacco leaves, and strimonium, cooked in the beer, etc., give it force. Potash is sometimes stirred into wine to correct acidity. Sulfite of soda is now very commonly stirred into cider to keep it from fermenting further. Sugar of lead is stirred into wines to make them clear and to keep them sweet, and so on through the whole long list. It is a curious instance of people's quiet acknowledgement of their own foolishness that a popular form of the invitation to take a drink is, come and hiss in some pizzen. I know of no plan by which anybody can be sure of obtaining pure liquor of any description. Some persons always purchase their wines and liquors while they are under the custom house lock and consequently before they have reached the hands of the importer. Yet there are scores of men in New York and Philadelphia who have made large fortunes by sending whiskey to France, their refining, colouring, flavouring, and doctoring it, then reshipping it to New York as French brandy, paying the duty, and selling it before it has left the custom house. There is a locality in France where a certain brand of wine is made. It is adulterated with red lead, and every year, more or less the inhabitants of that locality are attacked with lead colic, caused by drinking this poisoned wine right at the fountain head where it is made. There is more bogus champagne drank in any one year in the city of Paris alone than there is genuine champagne made in any one year in the world. America ordinarily consumes more so-called champagne annually than is made in the world, and yet nearly all the genuine champagne in the world is taken by the courts of Europe. The genuine hawk wine made at Johannesburg on the Rhine is worth three dollars per bottle by the large quantity, and nearly all of it is shipped to Russia. Yet at any of the hotels in the village of Johannesburg, within half a mile from the wine presses of the peer article, you can be supplied for a dollar per bottle with what purports to be the genuine hawk wine. Since chemistry has enabled liquor dealers to manufacture any description of wine or liquor for twenty-five cents to a dollar a gallon, there are annually made and sold thousands of gallons of wine and brandy that never smelled a grape. Suppose a wholesale liquor merchant imports genuine brandy. He usually rectifies and adulterates it by adding eighty-five gallons of pure spirits, refined whiskey, to fifteen gallons of brandy to give it a flavor, then colors and doctors it, and it is ready for sale. Suppose an Albany wholesaler dealer purchases, for pure brandy, ten pipes of this adulterated brandy from a New York importer. The Albany man immediately doubles his stock by adding an equal quantity of pure spirits. There are then seven and a half gallons of brandy in a hundred. A buffalo liquor dealer buys from the Albany man, and he in turn adds one half pure spirits. The Chicago dealer buys from the Buffalo dealer, and as nearly all spirit dealers keep large quantities of pure spirits on hand and know how to use it, he again doubles the quantity of his brandy by adding pure spirits. And the Milwaukee liquor dealer does the same after purchasing from the Chicago man. So, in the ordinary course of liquor transactions, by the time a hundred gallon pipe of pure brandy reaches Wisconsin, at a cost of five or perhaps ten dollars per gallon, ninety-nine gallons and one pint of it is the identical whiskey that was shipped from Wisconsin the same year at fifty cents per gallon. Truly a homeopathic dose of genuine brandy. And even that whiskey when it left Wisconsin was only half whiskey, for there are men in the whiskey making states who make it a business to take whiskey directly from the distillery, add it to an equal quantity of water, and then bring it up to a bead and the power of intoxication by mixing in a variety of the villainous drugs and deadly poisons enumerated in this chapter. The annual loss of strength, health, and life caused by the adulteration of liquor is truly appalling. Those who have not examined the subject can form no just estimate of the atrocious and extensive effects of this murderous humbug. End of chapter nineteen, recording by Rosie. The Peter Funks and their Functions, the Rural Divine and the Watch, rise in progress of mock auctions, their decline and fall. Not many years ago a dignified and revered man, whose name is well known to me, was walking sedately down Broadway. He was dressed in clerical garb of black garments and white neck cloth. He was a man of great learning, profound thought, long experience, unaffected piety, and pure and high reputation. All at once a kind of chattering shout smote him fair in the left ear. Narf, Narf, Narf, three shall I have? Narf, Narf, Narf, Narf, Narf. Going at two and a half, gone. And the grave divine, pausing, beheld a doorway over which waved a little red flag. Within, a company of eager bidders thronged around the auctioneer's stand, and the auctioneer himself, a well-dressed man with a highly respectable look, was just handing over to the delighted purchaser a gold watch. It would be cheap at one hundred dollars, said he in a despondent tone. It's mere robbery to sell it for that price. I'd buy it myself if it was legal. And while the others, with exclamations of surprise and congratulation, crowded to see this famous purchase, and the buyer exhibited it with a joyful countenance close by the door, the divine, just out of curiosity, stepped in. He owned no watch. He was a country clergyman and poor in this world's goods. So poor that, to use a familiar phrase, if steamboats were selling at a dime a piece, he would hardly be able to buy a gangplank. But what if he could, by good luck, buy a good gold watch for two dollars and a half in this wonderful city? Somehow that watch was snapped open and closed again right under his ministerial nose about six times. The auctioneer held up another of exactly the same kind and began to chatter again. Now, gentlemen, what am I offered for this first-class M.I. Tamias Gold English Lever Watch? Full-Jeweled Compensation Balance Anchor Escapement Hunting Case? One, did I hear? Say, two cents, won't you? Two and a half. Narf, narf, narf, narf, and a half. Two and a half and three quarters. Thank you, sir. To a sailor-like man in the corner. Three, said a tall and well-dressed young gentleman with short hair near the clergyman, adding in an undertone. I can sell it for fifty this afternoon. Three I am offered, says Mr. Auctioneer, and chattered on us before. And a half, did you say, sir? Thank you, sir. And a half, narf, narf. The Reverend Divine had said, and a half. The Peter Funks had got him. But he didn't find it out quite yet. The bidding was run up to four dollars. The clergyman took the watch, opened and examined it, was convinced, handed it back, ventured another half, and the watch was knocked down to him. The Auctioneer fumbled in some papers, and at a moment handed him his bargain neatly done up. This way to the clerk's office, if you please, sir, he added with a civil bow. The clergyman passed a little further in, and while the sales proceeded behind him, the clerk made out a bill and proffered it. Fifty-four dollars and a half, read the country divine astounded. Four and a half is what I bid. Four and a half, exclaimed the clerk with sarcastic indignation. Four dollars and a half, a pretty story, a minister to have the face to say he could buy a Nimai Tobias gold watch full jewel for four dollars and a half. I'll thank you for the money, sir. Fifty-four fifty, if you please. The Auctioneer, as if interrupted by the loud tones of the indignant clerk, stopped the sale to see what was the matter. On hearing the statement of the two parties, he cast a glance of angry contempt upon the poor clergyman, who by this time was uneasy enough at their scowling faces. Then as if relenting, he said half sneeringly. I don't think you look very well in this business, sir, but you are evidently a clergyman, and we wish everybody to have fair treatment in this office. We won't be imposed upon, sir, by any man. Here his face darkened, and his fists could be seen to clench with much meaning. Pay that money, sir. This establishment is not to be humbugged, but you needn't be afraid of losing anything. You may let me take the watch and sell it for you again on the spot. Very likely you can get more for it. You can't lose. The clergyman hesitated. The tall and well-dressed young man with short hair pushed up and said, Don't want it. Put her up again. Gee-blank. I'd like another chance myself. A heavily built fellow with one eye, observed over the Auctioneer's shoulder, with an evil look at the divine. Damned if I don't believe that cuss is a gambler, coming here to fool us country folks. They all those wears white neck cloths. I say, search them and boot them out of the shop. Hold your tongue, answered the Auctioneer with dignity. I will see you safe, sir, to the clergyman. But you bid that money and you must pay it. We can't do this business on any other principles. You will sell it for me again at once, asked the poor minister. Certainly, said the mollified Auctioneer. And the humbug to divine, with an indistinct sense of something wrong, but was not able to tell what, took out forty dollars from his lean wallet and handed it to the clerk. It's all I have to get home with, he said simply. Never fear, old gentleman, said the clerk affably. You'll be all right in two minutes. The watch was put up again. The clergyman, scarce able to believe his ears, heard it rapidly run up to sixty dollars and knocked down at that price. The cash was handed to the clerk and another bill made out. Ten percent deducted commission on sales. Usual term, sir, observed the clerk handing over the notes just received for the watch. And the divine, very thankful to get off for half a dollar, hurried off as fast as he could. I need not say that his fifty-four dollars was all counterfeit money. When he went next morning after endeavoring in vain to part with his new funds to find the place where he had been humbugged, it was closed shut and he could hardly identify even the doorway. He went to the police and the shrewd captain told him that it was a difficult business, but sent an officer with him to look up the rascals. Officer found one, demanded redress, clergyman did the same. Rascal asked clergyman's name, got it, told him he could prosecute if he liked. Clergyman looked at officer, officer with indifference observed. Means to stick your name in the papers. Clergyman said he would take further advice, did take it, thought he wouldn't be shown up as a greenie in the police reports, borrowed money enough to get home with, and if he has a gold watch now, which I really hope he has, got it either for its real value or as a testimonial. There, that with many variations, is the whole story of Peter Funk. These mock auctioneers sometimes, as in the case I have mentioned, take advantage of the respectability of their victims, sometimes of their haste to leave the city on business. When they could not possibly avoid it, they disgorge their prey. No instance is known to me of any legal penalty being inflicted on them by a magistrate, but they were always until 1862, treated by police, by magistrate, and by mayor, just as thieves would be who should always be let off on returning their steelings, so that they could not lose by thieving and might gain. These rascally mock auctioneers, thus protected by the authorities, used to fleece the public out of not less than $60,000 a year. One of them cleared $12,000 during the year 1861 alone, and this totally shameless and brazen-faced humbug florist in New York for 25 years. About the first day of June 1862, the Peter Funks had 11 dens or traps in operation in New York, five in Broadway below Fulton Street, and the others in Park Row and Cortland, Greenwich, and Chatham Streets. The name Peter Funk is said to have been that of the founder of their system, but I know nothing more of his career. At this date in 1862, the system was in a high state of organization and success, and included the following constituents. 1. Eight chief Funks or capitalists and managers, who names are well enough known, I have them on record. 2. About as many more salesmen who took turns with the chiefs in selling and clerking. 3. Seventy or eighty rank and file or rope or zen. These acted the part of buyers, like the purchaser whose delight over his watch helped to deceive the minister and the other bidders on that occasion. These fellows dressed up as countrymen, sailors, and persons of miscellaneous respectability, they bid and talked when that was sufficient, or helped the managers thrash any troublesome person if necessary. Once in a long time they met their match, as for instance, when the mate of a ship brought up a squad of his crew, burst into one of their dens, and beat and battered up the whole gang within an inch of their lives. But in most cases, the reckless infamy of these dregs of city vice gave them an immense advantage over a decent citizen, for they could not be defiled nor made ridiculous, and he could. 4. Two or three traders in cheap jewelry and fancy goods supplied the Funks with their wares. One of these fellows used to sell them fifty or a hundred dollars worth of this trash a day, and he lamented as much over their untimely end as the Ephesian silversmiths did over the loss of their trade in shrines. 5. A lawyer received a regular salary of one thousand two hundred dollars a year to defend all the Funk cases. 6. The city politicians, in office and out of it, who were want to receive the aid of the Funks, a very energetic cohort, at elections, and who in turn unscrupulously used both power and influence to keep them from punishment. All this cunning machinery was brought to naught, and New York relieved of a shame and a pest by the courage, energy, perseverance, and good sense of one Yankee officer, Russell Wells, a policeman. Mr. Wells took about six months to finish up his work. He began it of his own accord, finding that the spirit of the police regulations required it, prosecuted the undertaking without fear or favor, finding not very much support from the judicial authorities, and sometimes actual and direct discouragement. His method was to mount guard over one auction shop at a time, and warn all whom he saw going in, and to follow up all complaints to the utmost until that shop was closed, when he laid siege to another. Various offers of money direct and indirect were made him. One fellow offered him five hundred dollars to walk on the other side of the street. Another offered him one thousand dollars to drop the undertaking. Another hinted at a regular salary of hush money, saying, he had now got these fellows where he could make as much out of them as he wanted to, right along. Sometimes they threatened him with murder and sudden death. Several times they got out an injunction upon him, and several times sued him for slander. One of their complaints charged, with ludicrous hypocrisy, that the defendant, with malicious intent, stood round the door uttering slanderous charges against the good name, fame, and credit of the defendant. Just as foolish old lawyers used to argue that the greater the truth, the greater the libel. Sometimes they argued and indignantly denounced. One of them told him, he was a thief and a murderer, driving men out of employment whose wives and children depended on their business for support. Another contended that their business was just as fair as that of the stock-operators in Wall Street. I fear that wasn't making out much of a case. But their threats were idle, their suits and prosecutions and injunctions never came to a head, their bribes did not operate. The officer, imperturbably good-natured, but horribly diligent, watched and warned and hunted and complained and squeezed back their money at the rate of five hundred or one thousand dollars every month until they were perfectly sickened. One by one they shut up shop. One went to his farm, another to his merchandise, another to immigrant running, another, known by the elegant surname of Blur-Eye Thompson, to raising recruits, several unto the bounty-jumping business. Such was the life and death of an outrageous humbug and nuisance whose life was not to be found in any other city on earth, and would not have been endured in any except this careless, money-getting, misgoverned one of New York. The humbugs of the world by P. T. Barnum. Lottery sharks, Bolt and his brothers, Kenneth, Kimball and Company. A more central location wanted for business. Two seventeenthlies. Strange coincidence. I have before me a mass of letters, printed and lithographed circulars and the like, which illustrate well two or three of the most foolish and vicious swindles now extant. It is wrong to call them humbugs. They also proved that there are good many more fools alive in our great republic than some of us would like to admit. These letters and papers are signed respectively by the following names. E. J. Kimball, E. A. Wilson and J. T. Small. All of these productions, with one or two exceptions, are dated during the last three months of 1864 and January 1865. They are mailed from a good many different places and addressed to respectable people in all directions. In particular should be noticed, however, two lots of them. The first lot are signed either by Thomas Bolt and Coe, Hammett and Coe, Egerton Brothers or T. Seymour and Coe. When these four documents are placed together, each with its enclosure, a story is told that seems clear enough to explain itself to the greenest fool in the world. These fellows, Bolt and the rest of them, I mean, are lottery sharks. Now those who buy lottery tickets are very silly and credulous, or very lazy, or both. They want to get money without earning it. This foolish and vicious wish, however, betrays them into the hands of these lottery sharks. I wish that each of these poor, foolish, greedy creatures could study on this set of letters a while. Look at them. You see that the litograph handwriting in all four is in the same hand. You observe that each of them encloses a printed hand bill with scheme, or looking as so many peas. They refer, you see, to the same Havana scheme, the same Shelby College Lottery, the same managers, and the same place of drawing. Now see what they say. Each naive tells his fool his only object is to put said fool in possession of a handsome price, so that fool may run around and show the money and rope in more fools. What an ingenious way to make the fool think he will return value for the price. Each naive further says to his fool. I copy the words of the naive from his litograph letter. We are so certain that we know how to select a lucky certificate, that if the one we select for you does not, at the very least, draw a $5,000 price, we will what? Pay the money ourselves? Oh no, naive does not offer to pay half of it. We'll send you another package in one of our extra lotteries for nothing. Observe how particular every naive is to tell his fool to give us the name of the nearest bank, so that the draft for the price money can be forwarded instantly. And in return for all this kindness, what do Mr. Bolt and so forth want? Why, almost nothing. The ridiculously small sum, as Mr. Montague-Tig observed to Mr. Pexniff, of $10. You observe that Hammett and Co. in one circular demand $20 for the same $5,000 price, but the amount, they would say, is too trifling to be so particular about. I will suggest a form for answering these gentlemen. Let every one of my readers who receives one of their circulars just copy and date and sign and send them the following. Gentlemen, I thank you for your great kindness in wishing to make me the possessor of a $5,000 price in your truly rich and splendid Royal Havana Lottery. I fully believe that you know, as you say, all about how to get these prices, and that you can make it a big thing. But I cannot think of taking all that money from such kind of people as you. I must insist upon your having half of it, and I will not hear of any refusal. I therefore hereby authorise you to invest for me the trifle of $10, which you mention, and when the price is drawn to put half of it and $10 over, write into your own benevolent pantaloons pocket, and to remit the other half to me, addressed as follows. Here give the names of the nearest bank. I have not the least fear that you will cheat me out of my half, and as you see I thus place myself confidently in your hands. With many thanks for your great and underserved kindness, I remain your oblige and obedient servant, etc. etc. My readers will observe that this mode of replying affords full swing to the expansive charities of Bolt and his brethren, and is a sure method of saving the expenditure of $10, although Bolt is to get that amount back when the price is drawn. I charge nothing for these suggestions, but will not be so discourteous as to refuse a moderate percentage on all amounts received in pursuance of them from Brother Bolt and Co. Here is the second special lot of letters I spoke of. I lay them out on my desk as before. There are six letters signed respectively by Kimball, Goodrich, Darlington, Kenneth, Harper and Herbert. Now notice first the form and next the substance. As to the form, they are all written, not lithographed. They are on paper of the same make and size and out of the same lot, as you observe by the manufacturer's stamp, a representation of the capital in the upper corner. They are in the same hand, an easy legible business hand, though three of them are written with a backward slope. Those who sent them have not sent me the envelopes with them, except in one case, so that I cannot tell where they were mailed. Neither is any one of them dated inside at any town or post office, but by a wonderful coincidence every one of them is dated at number 17 Merchants Exchange. A busy mart that number 17 must be, and it is a still more curious coincidence that every one of these six industrious chaps has been unable to find a sufficiently central location for transacting his business. Every letter you see contains a printed slip advising of a removal as follows. Removal. Desiring a more central location for transacting my business. I have removed my offers to number 17 Merchants Exchange, where one says to West Troy, New York, another to Paterson, New Jersey, another to Bronxville, New York, another to Salem, New York, and so on. It is a new thing to find how central all those places are. Undeveloped metropolises seem to exist in every corner. Well, the slip ends with a notice that in future letters must be directed to the new place. Next, as to substance. The six letters all tell the same story. They are each the second letter, the first one having been sent to the same person, and having contained a lottery ticket, as a gift of love or free charity. This second letter is the one which is expected to fetch. It says in substance, your ticket has drawn a price of $200. The letters all name the same amount. But you didn't pay for it, and therefore are not entitled to it. Now send me $10 and I will cheat the lottery man by altering the postmark off your letter, so that the money shall seem to have been sent before the lottery was drawn. This forgery will enable me to get the $200 which I will send you. How cunning that is! It is exactly calculated to hit the notions of a vulgar, ignorant, lacy, greedy and unprincipled bumpkin. Such a fellow would see just far enough into the millstone to be tickled at the idea of cheating those lottery fellows. And the nave ends his letter with one more touch most delicately adapted to make Master Bumpkin feel certain that his cash is coming. He says, Be sure to show your prize to all your friends, so as to make them buy tickets at my office. Moreover these letters enclose each a report of the 17th monthly drawing of the Cosmopolitan Art Union Association. You may observe that one of these 17th drawings took place November 7 1864 and another December 5 1864, so that the 17th lead came twice. What is a far more remarkable coincidence is this, that in each of these reports is a list of 130 or 40 numbers that drew prices. And it is exactly the same list each time and the same price to each number. There is a third coincidence that one of these two drawings is said to have been at London, New York and the other at London, New Jersey. And lastly there is a fourth coincidence, that neither of these places exist. Now what a transparent swindle this is. How plain, how impudent, how irascaly, and all done entirely by the use of the post office privileges of the United States. Try to catch this fellow, you can find where he mailed his circular, but he probably stopped there overnight to do so and nobody knew it. In each circular he wrote to his jeeps to address him at the new more central location that he struggles after so hard. And how is the pursuer to find it? Would anybody naturally go and watch the post office at Bronxville, New York for instance as a particularly central location for business? Besides no one person is cheated out of enough to make him follow up the affair and probably nobody who sends the cash wants to say much about it afterward. He wants to wait and show the price. These dirty, sharking traps will always be set and will always catch silly people as long as there are any to catch. The only means of stopping such trickery is to diffuse the conviction that the best way to get a living is to go to work like a man and earn it honestly. End of Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of The Humbugs of the World. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Magdalena Cook. The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum. Another Lottery Humbug. Two hundred and fifty recipes. Vile books. Advantage cards. A package for you. Please send the money. Peddling in Western New York. Chapter 22 The readiness with which people will send off their money to a swindler is perfectly astounding. It does really seem as if an independent fortune could be made simply by putting forth circulars and advertisements, requesting the receiver to send five dollars to the advertiser and saying that it will be all right. I have already given an account of the way in which Lottery Dealers operate. From among the same pile of documents which I use then, I have selected a few others as instances in part, of a class of Humbugs sometimes of a kind even far more noxious, and which show that their devices and patrons are not only sharp as and fools, but often also very cold-blooded villains or very nasty ones. Some of them are managed by printed circulars and written letters, such as those before me. Some of them by newspaper advertisements. Some are only to cheat you out of money and others offer in return for money some base gratification. But whatever means they used and whatever purpose is sought, they are all alike in one thing. They depend entirely on the monstrous number of simpletons who will send money to people they know nothing about. Of the nasty ones I can give no details, while books, pictures, etc. are from time to time advertised, sold and forwarded by circular and through the mails and for large prices. There have been some cases where a funny sort of swindle has been affected by these peddlers of pruriancy by selling some dirty-minded dupe a cheap good book, at the extravagant price of a dear bad one. More than one foolish youth has received instead of the vile thing that he sent five dollars for, a nice little New Testament. It is obvious that not very loud complaints are likely to be made about such cheating as that. It is, perhaps, one of the safest swindles ever contrived. The first document which I take from my pile is the announcement of a fellow who operates lottery-wise. His scheme appeals at once to benevolence and to greediness. He says, The profits of the distribution are to be given to the sanitary commission, and secondly, every ticket brings the price off at least its full value and some of them five thousand dollars. If, therefore, you won't buy tickets for the filthy Lucas sake, buy for the sake of our soldiers. But, somebody says, how can you afford this arrangement, which is a direct loss of the whole cost of working your lottery, and, moreover, of the whole value of all prices costing more than a ticket? O, replies our benevolent friend, a number of manufacturers in New England has asked me to do this, and the prices are given by them as friends of the soldier. One observation will sufficiently show what an impudent mess of lies this story is. Namely, if the manufacturers of New England wanted to give money to the sanitary commission, they would give money. If goods, they would give goods. They certainly would not put their gifts through the additional roundabout, useless nonsense of a lottery, which is to turn over only the same amount of funds to the commission. The next document is a circular cent from a western town by a fellow who claims also to be a master of arts, doctor of medicines, and doctor of laws, but whose handwriting and language are those of a stable boy. This chap sends round a list of two hundred and fifty recipes at various prices, from twenty-five cents to a dollar each. Send him the money for any you wish, and he promises to return you the directions for making the stuff. You are then to go about and peddle it, and swiftly become independently rich. You can begin with a dollar, he says, in two days make fifty dollars, and then sweep on in a grand career of affluence, making from seventy-five to two hundred dollars a day, if you are industrious. What is petroleum to this? It is a mercy that we don't all turn to and peddle to each other. We should all get too rich to speak. The fellow, at a pure kindness and desire for your good, recommends you to buy all his recipes, as then you'll be sure to sell something to everybody. Most of these recipes are for sufficiently harmless purposes. Shaving soap, cement, inks, five gallons of good ink for fifteen cents, tooth powders, etc. Some of them are a rant nonsense, such as tea better than the Chinese, which is as if you promise something wetter than water, to make thieves, vinegar, prismatic diamond crystals for windows, to make yellow butter. Is the butter blue where the man lives? Others are of a sort calculated to attract foolish rustic rascals, who would like to gain an easy living by cheating, if they were only smart enough. Thus there is Ross Charles Great Secret, or How to Make Common Gold. My readers shall have a better recipe than this windlass. Work hard, think hard, be honest, and spend little. This will make common gold. And this is all the secret Rothschild ever had. A number of these recipes are barefaced quackeries, such as cures for consumption, cancer, rheumatism, and sundry other diseases. To make whiskers and mustaches grow. Ah, boys, you can't hurry up those things. Greasing your cheeks is just as good as trying to whistle the hair out, but not a bit better. Don't hurry, you will be old quite soon enough. But this fellow is ready for old fools as well as young ones. For he has recipes for curing baldness and removing wrinkles. And last but not least, quietly inserted among all these falleries and harmless humbugs, are two or three recipes which promise the safe gratification of the basis vices. Those are what he really hoped to get money for. I have carefully reframed from giving any names or information which would enable anybody to address any of these folks. I did not propose to cooperate with them, if I know it. The next circular, only to be very briefly alluded to, it promises to furnish on receipt of the price, and by mail or express, with perfect safety, so as to defy detection, any of twenty-two wholly infamous books, and various other cards and commodities, well suited to the public of Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. The most honest and decent things advertised in this unclean list are advantage cards, which enable the player to swindle his adversary by reading off his hand by the backs of the cards. The next paper I can copy verbatim, except some names, etc., is a letter as follows. Dear sir, there is a package in my care for a Mrs. Preston, New Griswold, which there is forty-eight cents freightage. Please forward the same. I shall send it per express your receipt. It is some little comfort to know that this gentleman, who is so much opposed to the present prevailing methods of spelling, lost the three cents which he invested in seeking freightage. But a good many sensible people have carelessly sent away the small amounts demanded by letters like the above, and have wondered why their prepaid parcels never came. Next is an account by a half-amused and half-indignant eyewitness of what happened in a well-known town in western New York on Friday, January 6, 1865. A personage described as dressed in Yankee style drove into the principal street of the place with a horse and buggy, and began to sell what is called in some parts of New England at Alborra, that is, imitation jewellery, but promising to return the customers their money if required and doing so. After a number of transactions of this kind he balls out like the sorcerer in Aladdin, who went around crying new lamps for old. He would give me four dollars for this five-dollar greenback. He found a customer, sold a one-dollar greenback for ninety cents, then sold some half-dollar bills for twenty-five cents each, then flung out among the crowd what a fisherman would call ground bait in the shape of a handful of currency. Everybody scrambled for the money. This liberal trader now drove slowly a little way along and the crowd pressed after him. He now began without any further promises to sell a lot of bogus lockets at five dollars each, and in a few minutes had disposed of about forty. Having therefore about two hundred dollars in his pocket and trade slackening he coolly observes with a terseness and clearness of oratory that would not discredit General Sherman. Gentlemen, I have sold you those goods at my price. I am a licensed peddler. If I give you your money back you will think me a lunatic. I wish you all the success in your ordinary vocations. Good morning. And sure enough he drove off. That same cunning chap has actually made a small fortune in his way. He really is licensed as a peddler and though arrested more than once has consequently not been found legally punishable. I will specify only one more of my collection of yet another kind. This is a printed circular appealing to a class of fools, if possible even shallower, sillier and more credulous than any I have named yet. It is headed The Gypsy's Seven Secret Charms. These charms consist of a kind of hellbroth or decoction. You are to wet the hands and the forehead with them and this is to render you able to tell what any person is thinking of. Upon taking anyone by the hand you will be able to entirely control the mind and will of such person. It is unnecessary to specify the purpose intended to be believed possible. These charms are also to enable you to buy lucky lottery tickets, discover things lost or hid, dream correctly of the future, increase the intellectual faculties, secure the affections of the other sex etc. These precious conceits are set forth in a ridiculous hodgepodge of statements. The charms that says were used by the Antediluvians were the secret of the Egyptian enchanters and of Moses too, of the pythoness and the heathen conjurers and humbugs generally, and, which will be used to the geographers of today, are used by the Siley, the swindler misspells again, of South America to charm beasts, birds and serpents. The way to control the mind, he says, was discovered by a French traveller named Tunia. This Frenchman is perhaps a relative of the equally celebrated Russian traveller, too far off. But here is the point after all. You send the money, we will say, for one of these charms, for they are for sale separately. You receive in return a second circular, saying that they work a great deal better all together, and so the man will send you all of them when you send the rest of the money. Send it if you choose. Now, how is it possible for people to be living among us here, who are fooled by such wretched, bolder dashes this? There are such, however, and a great many of them. I do not imagine that there are many of these adelpates among my readers. But there is no harm in giving once more a very plain and easy direction which may possibly save somebody some money and some mortification. Be content with what you can honestly earn, know whom you deal with. Do not try to get money without giving fair value for it, and pay out no money on strangers' promises, whether by word of mouth, written letters, advertisements, or printed circulars. Chapter 23 Trade and Business Impositions Chapter 23 A California coal mine, a Hartford coal mine, mysterious subterranean canal on the Isthmus. Some twelve years ago or so, in the early days of California immigration, a curious little business humbug came off about six miles from Monterey. A United States officer, about the year 1850, was on his way into the interior on a surveying expedition, with a party of men, a portable forge, a load of coal, and sundry other articles. At the place in question, six miles inland, the Lieutenant's coal wagon stalled in a tully swamp. With true military decision the greater part of the coal was thrown out to extricate the team and not picked up again. The expedition went on, and so did time, and the latter, in his progress, had some years afterward dried up the tully swamp. Some enterprising prospectors, with eyes wide open to the nature of things, now espied one fine morning the lumps of coal sticking their black noses up out of the mud. It was a clear case. There was a coal mine there. The happy discoverers rushed into town. A company was at once organized under the mining laws of the state of California. The corporators at first kept the whole matter totally secret, except from a few particular friends who were, as a very great favor, allowed to buy stock for cash. A compromise was made with the owner of the land, largely to his advantage. When things had thus been set properly at work, specimens of coal were publicly exhibited at Monterey. There was a gigantic excitement. Shares went up almost out of sight. Twelve hundred dollars in coin for one share, par one hundred dollars, was laughed at. About this time a quiet, honest Dutchman of the vicinity, passing along by the mine one evening with his cart, innocently and unconsciously, picked up the whole at one single load and carried it home. Prompt was the discovery of the sell by the stockholders, and valuable and intense it is said, their profane expressions of dissatisfaction. But the original discoverers of the mine vigorously protested that they were sold themselves and that it was only a case of common misfortune. It is, however, reported that a number of persons in Monterey, after the explosion of the speculation, remembered all about the coal wagon part of the business, which they said the excitement of the company had put entirely out of their heads. An equally unfounded but not quite so barefaced humbug came off a good many years ago in the good old city of Hardford, in Connecticut, according to the account given me by an old gentleman now deceased, who was one of the parties interested. This was a coal mine in the state house yard. It sounds like talking about getting sunbeams out of cucumbers. But something of the sort certainly took place. Coal is found among rocks of certain kinds, and not elsewhere. Among strata of granite or basalt, for instance, nobody expects to find coal. But, along with a certain kind of sandstone, it may reasonably be expected. Now, the Hardford Wiseacres found that tremendously far down under their city there was a sort of sandstone, and they were sure that it was the sort. So, they gathered together some money. There is a vast deal of that in Hardford, coal or no coal, organized a company, employed a mining superintendent, set up a boring apparatus, and down went their hole into the ground, an orifice some four or six inches across. Through the surface stratum of earth it went, and, bang, it came against the sandstone. They pounded away with good courage, and got some fifties or hundreds of feet further. Indefinable sensations were aroused in their minds at one time by the coming up among the products of boring of some chips of wood. Now wood, shortly coal, they thought. They might, I imagine, have brought up some pieces of boiled potato, or even fresh shad, provided it had fallen down first. They dug on until they got tired, and then they stopped. If they had gone down ten thousand feet, they would have found no coal. Coal is found in the new red sandstone, but theirs was the old red sandstone, which is a very fine old stone itself, but in which no coal was ever found, except what might have been put there on purpose, or possibly some faint indications. The hole they made, however, as my informant gravely observed, was left sticking in the ground, and if he is right, is to this day a sort of appendix or tail to the well northwest corner of the State House Square. So I suppose any one who chooses can go and poke down there after it and satisfy himself about the accuracy of this account. Such an inquirer ought to find satisfaction, for truth lies in the bottom of a well, says the proverb. Yet some ill-natured skeptics have construed this to mean that all will tell lies sometimes, for, as they accented, even truth lies at the bottom of a well. Still a different sort of business humbug, again, was a wonderful story which went the rounds about fifteen years ago, and which was cooked up to help some one or other of the various enterprises for new routes by Central America to California. This story started, I believe, in the New Orleans Courier. It was that a French doctor of Vera Paz in Guatemala, while making a canal from his estate to the sea, discovered, a way up at the very furthest extremity of the Gulf of Honduras, a vast ancient canal, two hundred and forty feet wide, seventy feet deep, and walled in on both sides with gigantic masses of rough-cut stone. The doctor at once gave up his own trifling modern excavation, and plunged into an explanation of this vast ancient one, as zealously as if he were probing after some uncertain bullet in a poor fellow's leg. The monstrous canal carried him in a straight line up the country to the southwestward. Some twenty miles or so inland, it plunged under a volcano. But see what a French doctor is made of. Cutting down the great old trees that obstructed the entrance and procuring a canoe with a crew of Indians, in he went. The canal became a prodigious tunnel of the same width and depth of water, and vaulted three hundred and thirty-five feet high in the living rock. Nothing is said about the bowels of the volcano, so that we must conclude either that such affairs are not planted so deep as is supposed, or that the fire pot of the concern was shoved one side, or bridged over by the canallors, or that the Frenchman had some remarkable good style of fire annihilator, or else that there is some mistake. Eighteen hours of incessant travel brought our intrepid MD safe through to the Pacific Ocean, during which time, if the maps of that country are of any authority, he passed under quite a number of mountains and rivers. The trip was not dark at all, as shafts were sunk every little way, which lighted up the interior quite well. And then the volcano gave, or ought to have given, some light inside. Indeed, if the doctor had only thought of it, I presume he would have noticed double rows of street gas lamps on each side of the canal. The exclusive right to use this excellent transit route has not, to my knowledge, been secured to anybody yet. It will be observed that ships as large as the Great Eastern could easily pass each other in this canal, which renders it a sure thing for any other vessel, unless that shrewd and grasping fellow, the Emperor Louis Napoleon, has got hold of this canal, and is keeping it dark for some still darker purposes of his own, as, for instance, to run his puppet Maximilian into for refuge, when he has run out of Mexico. It is, therefore, still in the market. And, my publication of the facts effectually disposes of the Emperor's plan for secrecy, of course. End of Chapter Twenty-three