Struggles and Triumphs by P.T. Barnum — Read

My Private Life -- Plans for the Public Benefit in Bridgeport -- Opening Avenues -- Planting Shade-Trees -- Old Fogies -- Conservatism a Curse to Cities -- Benefiting Barnum's Property -- Sale of Lindencroft -- Living in a Farmhouse -- By the Seashore -- Another New Home -- Waldemere -- How It Came to Be Built -- Magic and Money -- Wavewood and the Petrel's Nest -- My Farm -- The Holland Blanket Cattle -- My City Residence -- Comforts of City Life -- Begging Letters -- My Family -- Religious Reflections -- My Fifty-Ninth Birthday -- The End of the Record.

What I can call, without undue display of egotism or vanity, my "public life," may be said to have closed with my formal and final retirement from the managerial profession, when my second Museum was destroyed by fire, March 3, 1868. But he must have been a careless reader of these pages, which record the acts and aspirations of a long and industrious career, who does not see that what, in opposition to my "public life," may be considered my "private life," has also been largely devoted to the comfort, convenience, and permanent prosperity of the community with which so many of my hopes and happiest days are thoroughly identified. I speak of these things, I trust, with becoming modesty, and yet with less reluctance than I should do, if my fellow-citizens of Bridgeport had not generally and generously awarded me sometimes, perhaps, more than my need of praise for my unremitting and earnest efforts to promote whatever would conduce to the growth and improvement of our charming city.