Struggles and Triumphs by P.T. Barnum — Read

The Amusement Business -- Different Grades -- Catering for the Public -- My Claims, Aims and Efforts -- Joice Heth -- Apparent Genuineness of Her Vouchers -- Beginning Life as a Showman -- Success of My First Exhibition -- Second Step in the Show Line -- Signor Vivalla -- My First Appearance on Any Stage -- At Washington -- Anne Royall -- Stimulating the Public -- Contests Between Vivalla and Roberts -- Excitement at Fever Heat -- Connecting Myself with a Circus -- Bread and Butter Dinner for the Whole Company -- Narrow Escape from Suffocation -- Lecturing an Abusive Clergyman -- Aaron Turner -- A Terrible Practical Joke -- I Am Represented to Be a Murderer -- Rails and Lynch Law -- Novel Means for Securing Notoriety.

By this time it was clear to my mind that my proper position in this busy world was not yet reached. I had displayed the faculty of getting money, as well as getting rid of it; but the business for which I was destined, and, I believe, made, had not yet come to me; or rather, I had not found that I was to cater for that insatiate want of human nature -- the love of amusement; that I was to make a sensation on two continents; and that fame and fortune awaited me so soon as I should appear before the public in the character of a showman. These things I had not foreseen. I did not seek the position or the character. The business finally came in my way; I fell into the occupation, and far beyond any of my predecessors on this continent, I have succeeded.