The Life Of P.T. Barnum

Written originally in 1869, this book is my Recollections of more than Fifty Busy Years. Few men in civil life have had a career more crowded with incident, enterprise, and various intercourse with the world than mine. With the alternations of success and defeat, extensive travel in this and foreign lands; a large acquaintance with the humble and honored; having held the preeminent place among all who have sought to furnish healthful entertainment to the American people, and, therefore, having had opportunities for garnering an ample storehouse of incident and anecdote, while, at the same time, needing a sagacity, energy, foresight and fortitude rarely required or exhibited in financial affairs, my struggles and experiences (it is not altogether vanity in me to think) cannot be without interest to my fellow-countrymen. Various leading publishers have solicited me to place at their disposal my Recollections of what I have been, and seen, and done. These proposals, together with the partiality of friends and kindred, have constrained me to put in a permanent form what, it seems to me, may be instructive, entertaining and profitable. Thirty years since, for the purpose, principally, of advancing my interests as proprietor of the American Museum, I gave to the press some personal reminiscences and sketches. They were, however, very hastily, and therefore imperfectly, prepared. Though including, necessarily, in common with them, some of the facts of my early life, in order to make this autobiography a complete and continuous narrative, yet, as the latter part of my life has been the more eventful, and my recollections so various and abundant, this book is new and independent of the former. It is the matured and leisurely reviewing of more than half a century of work and struggle, and final success, in spite of fraud and fire the story of which is blended with amu
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