little better than so much old iron.  Terry knowing that Barnum was largely interested in real estate in East Bridgeport, and anxious to have it improved, thought he could make a good arrangement with him for building a factory there for the manufacture of clocks, and did so.  Terry had a large quantity of old clocks in a store in New York—­many of them old-fashioned and unsaleable, and thousands of these were not worth fifty cents apiece.  Terry and Barnum now proposed forming a joint-stock company, putting in their old rubbish as stock, and estimating it, most likely, at four times its value in cash.  They built a factory in East Bridgeport, and made preparations for manufacturing.  Terry knew ten times as much about the business as Barnum did, and knowing, also, that the old stock was comparatively worthless, held back while Barnum was urging him to push ahead with the manufacturing.  Terry made a great bluster, saying that he was going to hire men and do a great business, while, unknown to Barnum, he was trying to sell the stock he held in the company.  They finally cooked up a plan to sell their New York store and the Bridgeport factory and machinery, if they could, to the Jerome Manufacturing Company, taking stock in that company for pay, and—­the Jerome Company stock being issued to the owners of the Terry & Barnum stock—­thus merge the two companies into one.  This transaction was made and closed without my knowledge, (I being at the time from the State,) though the “old man” has had to bear all the blame.  As I afterwards found out, Barnum told my son, the Secretary of the Company, that Terry & Barnum owed about twenty thousand dollars:  this was the amount Terry had drawn for on the New York store.  They made a written agreement with the Jerome Manufacturing Company, to this effect;—­that our Company should assume the liabilities of their old Company, which were stated at twenty thousand dollars, and Barnum was to endorse to any extent for the Jerome Company.  It afterwards proved that the entire debts of Terry & Barnum amounted to about seventy-two thousand dollars, which the Jerome Company were obliged to assume.  The great difference in the real and supposed amount of their indebtedness and the unsaleable property turned in as stock were enough to ruin any company.  It is a positive fact that the stock of the Jerome Company was not worth half as much, three months after Barnum came into the concern as it was before that time.  Some of the stock-holders did not like to have Terry own stock, and Barnum to satisfy them, bought him out, paying him twelve thousand dollars in cash—­he in the end, making a grand thing out his Ansonia remains.  It is well known that the Jerome Manufacturing Company failed in the fall of 1855, to the wonder and astonishment of myself and of every body else.  The true causes of this great failure never have been made public.  I myself did not know them at that time, but have found them out from time to time since, and I now