up in front of him, and slapping his hands together, exclaimed:

"You needn't t-t-take off any more c-c-clothes, for if it ain't
all on your b-b-back, you've lost it."

"If it is, I suppose you have!" Barnum replied, pulling the whole
shirt from off his back!

Such a shriek of laughter as burst forth from the crowd was
scarcely ever heard, and certainly such a blank countenance as
old Darrow exhibited it would be hard to conceive. Seeing that he
was most incontinently "done for," and perceiving that his
neighbor Hough had helped to do it, he ran up to him in great
anger, and shaking his fist in his face, exclaimed:

"H-H-Hough, you infernal r-r-rascal, to go against your own
neighbor in favor of a D-D-Danbury man. I'll pay you for that
some time, you see if I d-d-don't."

All hands went up to the bar and drank with a hearty good will,
for it was seldom that Darrow got taken in, and he was such an
inveterate joker they liked to see him paid in his own coin.
Never till the day of his death did he hear the last of the
"whole shirt."



CHAPTER V. BEGINNING AS A SHOWMAN.

FINDING HIS TRUE VOCATION--THE PURCHASE OF JOICE HETH--EVIDENCE