Explore "The Humbugs of the World" by P.T. Barnum on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Diamond cut diamond; or, yankee superstitions -- Matthias the impostor -- New York follies thirty years ago.
There is a story that on a great and solemn public occasion of the Romish Church, a Pope and a Cardinal were, with long faces, performing some of the gyrations of the occasion, when, instead of a pious ejaculation and reply, which were down in the program, one said to the other gravely, in Latin "mundus vult decipi; " and the other replied, with equal gravity and learning, "decipiatur ergo: " that is, "All the world chooses to be fooled. " -- "Let it be fooled then."