P. T. Barnum：Struggles and Triumphs, Additional Excerpt 492

My friend, you need not take that trouble, you can easily prove that you are “as good as he is”; you have only to behave as well as he does, but you cannot make anybody believe that you are as rich as he is. Besides, if you put on these “airs,” and waste your time and spend your money, your poor wife will be obliged to scrub her fingers off at home, and buy her tea two ounces at a time, and everything else in proportion, in order that you may keep up “appearances,” and after all, deceive nobody. On the other hand, Mrs. Smith may say that her next-door neighbor married Johnson for his money, and “everybody says so.” She has a nice one thousand dollar camel’s hair shawl, and she will make Smith get her an imitation one and she will sit in a pew right next to her neighbor in church, in order to prove that she is her equal.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50115
Locator：Additional excerpt 492 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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