The 48 Laws of Power

by Robert Greene

Mr. Peale himself decided to attack Barnum by building a reputation for “high-brow entertainment,” promoting his museum’s programs as more scientific than those of his vulgar competitor. Mesmerism (hypnotism) was one of Peale’s “scientific” attractions, and for a while it drew big crowds and was quite successful. To fight back, Barnum decided to attack Peale’s reputation yet again. Barnum organized a rival mesmeric performance in which he himself apparently put a little girl into a trance. Once she seemed to have fallen deeply under, he tried to hypnotize members of the audience—but no matter how hard he tried, none of the spectators fell under his spell, and many of them began to laugh. A frustrated Barnum finally announced that to prove the little girl’s trance was real, he would cut off one of her fingers without her noticing. But as he sharpened the knife, the little girl’s eyes popped open and she ran away, to the audience’s delight. He repeated this and other parodies for several weeks. Soon no one could take Peale’s show seriously, and attendance went way down. Within a few weeks, the show closed. Over the next few years Barnum established a reputation for audacity and consummate showmanship that lasted his whole life. Peale’s reputation, on the other hand, never recovered.