Struggles and Triumphs by P.T. Barnum — Read

At Home -- Extinguishment of the Clock Debts -- A Rascally Proposition -- Barnum on His Feet Again -- Repurchase of the Museum -- A Gala Day -- My Reception by My Friends -- The Story of My Troubles -- How I Waded Ashore -- Promises to the Public -- The Public Response -- Museum Visitors -- The Receipts Doubled -- How the Press Received the News of Restoration -- The Sycophants -- Old and Fast Friends -- Robert Bonner -- Consideration and Courtesy of Creditors -- The Boston Saturday Evening Gazette Again -- Another Word for Barnum.

In 1859 I returned to the United States. During my last visit abroad I had secured many novelties for the Museum, including the Albino Family, which I engaged at Amsterdam, and Thiodon's mechanical theater, which I found at Southampton, beside purchasing many curiosities. These things all afforded me a liberal commission, and thus, by constant and earnest effort, I made much money, besides what I derived from the Tom Thumb exhibitions, my lectures, and other enterprises. All of this money, as well as my wife's income and a considerable sum raised by selling a portion of her property, was faithfully devoted to the one great object of my life at that period -- my extrication from those crushing clock debts. I worked and I saved. When my wife and youngest daughter were not boarding in Bridgeport, they lived frugally in the suburbs, in a small one-story house which was hired at the rate of $150 a year. I had now been struggling about four years with the difficulties of my one great financial mistake, and the end still seemed to be far off. I felt that the land, purchased by my wife in East Bridgeport at the assignees' sale, would, after a while, increase rapidly in value; and on the strength of this expectation more money was borrowed for the sake of taking up the clock notes, and some of the East Bridgeport property was sold in single lots, the proceeds going to the same object.