After the Bawl.

No one really knows who started the advertising bawl arolling, and no one can predict when—if ever—it will stop. Some assert that it was the work of a certain Mr. Barnum, the King of Beasts—the man who put the hippo in hippodrome, spotted the leopard, circuited the circus, lassooed the Ilama, put the gumbo on Jumbo, made allegations about alligators, gave talks on auks, knew all about guns, and introduced five hundred specimens of fearsome but jaded fauna to a pop-eyed populace.

Everybody who knows a circus from a surplice has heard about Mr. Barnum, but although it must be admitted that he possessed the faculty of forcing continuous draughts of air through his vocal chords in such a manner as to produce a plethora of personal plaudit, and although, by perpetrating publicity perpetually, he left his imprint on the pages of natural and page 11 unnatural history, nevertheless it is wrong to attribute to him the birth of the notion. The subtle science seems to have been hatched before Nature produced Barnum, the human bill-board.