his long confinement to the house his stock of ready money became
sadly di-minished. As soon as he was able to travel he went home
to recover his strength, and while there had the happiness of
renewing the acquaintance, so pleasantly begun, with the pretty
tailoress, Charity Hallett.

His health fully restored he returned to Brooklyn, but not to his
old position. Pleasant as that had been, it no longer contented
the restless, ambitious Barnum. He opened a "porter-home," but
sold out a few months later, at a good profit, and took another
clerkship, this time at 29 Peck Slip, New York, in the store of a
certain David Thorp. He lived in his employer's family, with
which he was a great favorite, and where he had frequent
opportunities of meeting old friends, for Mr. Thorp's place was a
great resort for Bethel and Danbury hatters and combmakers.

At this time Barnum formed his first taste for the theatre. He
went to the play regularly and soon set up for a critic. It was
his one dissipation, however. A more moral young fellow never
existed; he read his Bible and went to church as regularly as
ever, and to the day of his death was wont to declare that he
owed all that was good in his character to his early observance
of Sunday.

In the winter of 1898 his grandfather offered to him, rent free,
his carriage-house, which was situated on the main street, if he
would come back to Bethel. The young man's capital was one
hundred and twenty dollars; fifty of this was spent in fixing up
his store, and the remainder he invested in a stock of fruit and
confectionery. Having arranged with fruit dealers of his