P. T. BARNUM'S OWN STORY. The Autobiography of P. T. Barnum. The Viking Press; New York, 1927. $3.00.

PT. BARNUM is perhaps best known to the American people for his statistics on the birth rate of the American sucker, but in his autobiography he sedulously avoids the attitude expressed in his famous aphorism. Rather does he paint himself, in loose, easy sentences stuffed with first personal pronouns, as a man with a mission.

He believed that the universal "Yankee nation" to which he dedicates his book, was entitled to amusement, and that he had been sent almost as a prophet to supply that need. He further believed that the public would go to any lengths to obtain amusement and did not object to an occasional hoax, so long as it was all in the spirit of good clean fun. Good clean fun there is in plenty among the pages of this long showing off of a showman, and fun that is enjoyable to a reader if not taken in too large doses.

From a dabbler in the two-a-day ham-and-egg vaudeville, to a trouper in the South, to proprietor of the American Museum, and finally to owner of the great circus that now bears his name, Barnum was a Yankee, a Connecticut Yankee, to be exact, and many are the tales, of business deals that smack of the wisdom of the Nutmeg state. The reader need have no fear that he may overlook these bits of David Harum, for they are advertised, in true Barnum style, for several pages before and after the transaction.

The two most interesting bits in the book, which is made up of interesting bits strung together on long thin threads of personal narrative, are the chapters devoted to Jenny Lind and General Tom Thumb. The reviewer wonders how many readers shared his own ignorance of the fact that Barnum brought Jenny Lind to this country. The Swedish Nightingale was given to the American public as a proof that the sponsor of Joice Heth, the Fejee Mermaid, and the Model of Niagara could also produce some legitimate and more high-hat entertainment. Except for a few financial statements, the story of Jenny Lind is well worth reading.

The tale of Tom Thumb is even better. In his account of the midget's triumph in Europe, P. T. Barnura tries hard to be nonchalant in his talk of Queen Victoria, Baroness Rothschild, and continental royalty, but he simply can't--and who could--and his amiable strutting only makes the story the pleasanter.

The whole book is a grand parade, with banners flapping, barkers barking, and calliopes screeching, and the heroic portrait of Barnum ever in the background. If one can overlook this, which does grow distasteful after a time, he will find much that is entertaining, and much that is instructive in the art of kidding the public with pleasure and profit.

The following apologia is typical alike of the book and the man: "If I have exhibited a questionable dead mermaid in my museum, it should not be overlooked that I have also exhibited much . . . about which there could be no doubt, and I should hope that a little clap-trap occasionally . . . might find an offset in a wilderness of wonderful, instructive, and amusing realities."