Barnum as a Young Lover

That was in his big book P. T. Barnum wrote about himself. It is very complete, too, but there is one little incident which he either forgot to mention, or which got pied when the forms went to press. It occurred when the great showman was a young man, and a resident of this section. He was paying impetuous attention to a young lady living in Newton. Being a son of poor but honest parents, he was obliged to walk over to the village which contained his adored, on the Sunday nights he visited her. When there he labored under another and more awkward disadvantage. The young lady's father conceived a singular and most violent dislike of the amiable embryo showman. This necessitated extreme caution on the part of the lover, and he was equal to the emergency, as a matter of course. His ingress to the house was by a window on the second floor, which he reached by springing from the cover of a cistern curb, and catching hold of the window ledge. His egress was effected by hanging full length from the ledge and then dropping to the cistern cover, a fall of about six inches. One Sunday he took with him on the visit a young man who now carries his silvered hairs behind a Danbury grocery counter. They reached the place, the young lady saw the signal, opened the window and the famous Barnum sprung up into bliss. The young man was to amuse himself about the village until the hour of departure. He amused himself. It don't seem possible that any one could be so brutal, but that young man actually removed the cover of the cistern. Then he sat down by the fence and ate currants, and calmly waited for the result. P. T. finished his sparking, and backed out of the window the full length his hands would permit.

"Good-bye," he gasped in a whisper, as he prepared to drop.

"Good-bye, Phinny," she whispered back.

Then he let go, and instantly shot from sight into a yawning abyss of darkness and rain water, and if he had been of solid iron heated to a white glow, he could not have created more of a commotion in striking the water. It is not necessary to repeat what Mr. Barnum said, both when crawling out of the cistern and during the eight miles walk home, but shortly after he became a Universalist. — Danbury News.