Explore "Struggles and Triumphs" by P.T. Barnum on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
My Birth -- First Property -- Farmer-Boy Life -- Going to School -- Early Acquisitiveness -- A Holiday Peddler -- First Visit to New York -- Learning to "Swap" -- Miseries from Molasses Candy -- "Ivy Island" -- Entering Upon My Estate -- Clerkship in a Country Store -- Trading Morals -- The Bethel Meetinghouse -- Stove Question -- Sunday School and Bible Class -- My Composition -- The One Thing Needful.
I was born in the town of Bethel, in the State of Connecticut, July 5, 1810. My name, Phineas Taylor, is derived from my maternal grandfather, who was a great wag in his way, and who, as I was his first grandchild, gravely handed over to my mother at my christening a gift-deed, in my behalf, of five acres of land situated in that part of the parish of Bethel known as the "Plum Trees. " I was thus a real estate owner almost at my very birth; and of my property, "Ivy Island," something shall be said anon.