Excerpt from How to Get Rich

In the city of his adoption he is, by unanimous consent, the foremost citizen, pouring out his money like water for every species of public improvement. In his business he has sought to combine popular amusement with popular educa tion. He is a man of pure life, who has taught temperance by precept and example to young and old. He is a man of positive religious convictions and deep religious life.

Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in Bethel, Ct July 5, 1810. His father, Philo Barnum, was a tailor, a farmer, a country merchant, and sometimes a tavern keeper, and was the son of Ephraim Barnum, who was a captain in the revolutionary war. Mr. Barnum tells of saving his pennies when a child, until at the age of six he was the proud possessor of a silver dollar. On holidays and training days he peddled cakes, candies, etc., and, instead of spending money, earned it. By the time I was 12 years old, he says, beside other property, I was the owner of a sheep and a calf, and should soon, no doubt, have become a small Croesus, had not my father kindly permitted me to purchase my, own clothing, which somewhat reduced my little store. Mr. Barnum's father died when Phineas was 15 years old, and left his family in very poor circumstances. I was obliged, says Mr. Barnum, to get trusted for the pair of shoes I wore to my father's funeral. I literally began the world with nothing, and was barefooted at that. Young Barnum developed a distaste for manual labor, and was employed as clerk in a country store. He also clerked in Brook lyn, and opened a porter house there on his own account, which he sold out not long afterward at a profit. In 1828 he returned to Bethel and opened a fruit and confectionery store, and an agency to sell lottery tickets added to his income. His interest in the lottery business, which was then legalized and regarded as respectable, was afterward greatly increased, and he established a number of agencies. In November, 1829, Mr. Barnum was married to Miss Charity Hal lett, a pretty tailoress of Bethel. He next tried his hand as an auctioneer in the book trade, travelling about the country, but was not very successful. Then he and his uncle, Alanson Taylor, established in Bethel a country store, of which he later secured the whole control.

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