"THE WILD MAN OF BORNEO."

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue LXIV, 13 September 1902, Page 7 (Supplement)

"THE WILD MAN OF BORNEO."

"The Wild Man of Borneo" (remarks a writer in an American weekly) was a poor old drunken sailor whom Bai'num was trying to reform; for Barnum, us in many little things, was first of all among the great temperance men. This old Yankee sailor, whom Barnum had known from the first, was an expert with his pocketknife, and during long voyages across the Pacific he would whittle out tkulls, skeletons, and so forth. Finally be found himself at New Bridgeport, Connecticut, and destitute. He had nothing at al) but a few wooden skulls and skeletons fastened together with wires so that thf bones would rattle fenrfully. He went to Barnum to try to sell these. He waa ragged, hairy, hungry.. "Why, where h

you been?" "Boon to Borneo." "Well, you look it ! Come ir. and Hit down. We are just going to have supper." The poor tramp begged Barnum to put him in a cage to keep him from drink — begged to be put in an iron cage, like a wild beast, where he could sit and whittle and "sober off." And this is how "Ths Wild Man of Borneo" was conceived and brought forth. Little boys would literally fall over one another to get clone to the iron cage where that Yankee sailor sat on a pile of wooden bones gnawing at a wooden skull. But when ho would jump up and shake that rattling skeleton in one hand and nearly tear down the cage with tho other, they would fall in heaps in their haste to get away. I hear he would not play wild man after Barnum died. I also hear that Barnum left him quite a pot of money.