Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1888 — A Spark Put Out. [ARTICLE]

A Spark Put Out.

Here is a funny newspaper story about the venerable and popular showman, P. T. Bamum. As a matter of course, his old companion fire figures prominently in the story. This time, however, it was the fire of love: When Phineas was a young man he paid attentions to a young lady in Newtown. The young lady’s father conceived a singular and most violent dislike to the amiable and embryotic showman. This necessitated extreme caution on the part of the lover. His ingress to the house was by a window of a sitting-room on the first floor, which he reached by springing from the cover of a cistern and catching hold of the window-ledge. His egress was effected by hanging full length from the ledge and then dropping to the cistern cover, a fall of about six inches. One Sunday he took with him on thevisit a young man. They reached the place, the young lady saw the signal, opened the window, and the famous Barnum sprang up into bliss. The young man was to amuse himself about the village until the hour of departure. It doesn’t seem possible that anybody’ could be so brutal, hut that young man actually removed the cover to the cistern. Phineas finished his sparking, and backed out of the window the full 1 length his hands would permit. Then he let go, and instantly shot from sight; into a yawning abyss of darkness and rain-water. It is not necessary t{x repeat what Mr. Bamum said, both wlTen crawling out of the cistern and during the eight miles’ walk home.