It will be remembered that Barnum made two or three trips to Europe to provide in some way for the support of his “poor and destitute” family, which as he claimed, had been robbed and ruined by the Connecticut clock-makers.  At one time he was stopped on a pier in New York, just as he was starting for Europe, by a suit brought against him.  Thus the news went abroad that poor Barnum was hunted and troubled on every side with these clock notes.  It was reported that he was quite sick in England and could not live, and, at another time, that being much depressed and discouraged on account of his many troubles, he had taken to drinking very hard, and in all probability would live but a short time; while at the same time, he was lecturing on temperance to the English people, and was in fact a total-abstinence man.  These stories were extensively circulated; the value of his paper was depreciated in the market, and was, in several instances bought for a small sum.

Since writing the foregoing with regard to his coming into the Company, and, as he states, being ruined by it, I have ascertained to my own satisfaction, that our connection with him was the means of ruining the Company.  A few days since I was talking with a man who has been more familiar than myself with the whole transaction, and he told me it was his opinion that if we had never seen Barnum we should still have been making clocks in that factory.  It was a great mystery to me, and to every body else, how the Company could run down so rapidly during the last year.  I think I have found out, and these are my reasons.  Instead of having an amount of twenty thousand dollars to cancel of the Terry & Barnum debts and accounts (which the Secretary foolishly agreed to do.) it eventually proved to be about seventy thousand; (this I have found out since the failure.) This great loss the Secretary kept to himself, and it involved the Company so deeply that he became almost desperate; for knowing by this time that he had been greatly embarrassed, he was determined to raise money in any way that he could, honestly, and get out of the difficulty if possible.  He had, as he thought, got to keep this an entire secret, because if known it would ruin the credit of the Company.  When these extra drafts and notes of Terry & Barnum were added to the debts of the Company, he was obliged to resort to various expedients to raise money to pay them.  This led him to the exchange of notes on a large scale, which proved to be a great loss, as many of the parties were irresponsible.  There was a loss of thirty thousand dollars by one man, and I am sure that there must have been more than fifty thousand dollars lost in this way.  He was also obliged to issue short drafts and notes and raise money on them at fearful rates.  The Terry & Barnum stock which was taken in at par, was not worth twenty-five per cent, which had a tendency to reduce the value of the stock of our Company, though I have recently heard that the