“Well, this is a big country, and you Americans do everything on a big scale, that’s a fact,” was the expression for the thousandth time of my Anglo-Saxon companions.
In , I made up a party of ten, including my English friend, and we started for Kansas on a grand buffalo hunt. General Custar, commandant at Fort Hayes, was apprized in advance of our anticipated visit, and he received us like princes. He fitted out a company of fifty cavalry, furnishing us with horses, arms and ammunition. We were taken to an immense herd of buffaloes, quietly browsing on the open plain. We charged on them, and during an exciting chase of a couple of hours, we slew twenty immense bull buffaloes. We might have killed as many more had we not considered it wanton butchery.
My friend George A. Wells, of Bridgeport, who is a great hunter, was one of the party, and although he had slain two buffaloes, and had lost himself on the prairie, not only to his own dismay, but to the great terror for four mortal hours of all his companions, he was by no means satisfied. He wanted to camp out and hunt buffaloes for several days longer. Another Bridgeport huntsman, Mr. James Wilson, was of the same mind. But when the question was put to vote, my English friend, John Fish, who had made himself sore by hard riding; Mr. Charles B. Hotchkiss, a Bridgeport bank president, who was quite content with killing one buffalo; my right bower, David W. Sherwood, who with a single shot dropped an immense bull (as indeed he now and then has done with no other weapon than his tongue); David M. Read, a Bridgeport merchant; another Bridgeporter, Theodore W. Downs—each credited with one or two carcases on the field; and I who had brought down two and had half killed another buffalo—all voted that we had done enough and were in favor of returning home. Whereupon Wells indignantly exclaimed:
“I was invited out here for a hunt, but you have made it a race.”
But every man had killed his buffalo, some had killed two, and we were satisfied. We had plenty of buffalo and antelope meat, and on the whole our ten days’ sport afforded another “sensation,”—a feeling so necessary to one in my state. But “sensations” cannot be made to order every day. I am, therefore, taught by an experience of three years’ “retirement” from business, that it is better to be moderately engaged in some legitimate occupation so long as health and energy permit. If a man is regularly in “harness,” though he may do but a small portion of the drawing, he will at least so far occupy his mind as not to need spasmodic excitements.
Hence, although my worldly possessions—trivial indeed in comparison with the wealth of some of America’s millionaires—were yet as ample as I cared to acquire, nevertheless from the very necessity of my active nature, in the Autumn of I began to prepare a great show enterprise, requiring five hundred men and horses to transport and conduct it through the country. Selecting as manager of this gigantic enterprise Mr. William C. Coup, whom I had favorably known for some years as a capital showman and a man of good judgment, integrity, and excellent executive ability, we spent several weeks in blocking out and perfecting our course of action. As one project after another, involving the outlay of thousands upon thousands of dollars, was laid before Manager Coup, he began to open his eyes pretty widely, and before we had been three weeks in consultation, he exclaimed:
“Why, Mr. Barnum, such a show as you are projecting after a while would ruin the richest man in America, for the expenses would double the receipts every day!”
I begged Mr. Coup not to be alarmed, reminding him that I was not wholly inexperienced in the show business, and that, in any event, I was to “foot the bills.” It is true that the enormous expense of this vast scheme involved a greater risk than any showman had ever before dared to assume. My main object in setting on foot this great travelling exhibition was to open a safety valve for my pent up energies, and I felt far more anxious to put before the public a grand and triumphant show than I did to add a penny to my competence.
When my plans were made public, the proprietors of the travelling shows throughout the country, with scarcely an exception, declared that my exhibition necessarily must prove a failure, for, they said, “No travelling show in the world ever took in one-half so much money per day as Barnum’s daily expenses will be.” I knew that this was nearly true; but in reply to their ill-omened prognostications, I only said: “Well, but you see, no show that has travelled ever drew out one-half of the people; I expect to attract all of them.” I confess I felt that my reputation for always giving my patrons more than their money’s worth, and also for scrupulously excluding from my exhibitions everything objectionable to the refined and moral, would inevitably draw out large numbers of people who are not in the habit of attending ordinary travelling shows. With these views, I had confidence in my undertaking from the start, and I expended money like water in order fully to carry out my intentions and desires.
Previous business arrangements prevented my opening, at the first, in New York; but I did the next best thing by going to the next best place for the benefit and convenience of my numerous New York friends and patrons, and opened
