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In 1861, Mr. Barnum had engaged a bright, intelligent little man named George Washington Morrison Nutt. He named him Commodore Nutt, and exhibited him in the museum as the "$30,000 Nutt." During my levees at the museum, Mr. Barnum, learning that my sister, Minnie, seven years my junior, was also of diminutive stature, induced me to send for her. My parents brought her to the city, and Mr. Barnum, greatly pleased with the beauty of her sweet face and faultless form, immediately made a proposition for her engagement, to which my parents were willing to accede, as she would be under my care and supervision. The idea had presented itself to Mr. Barnum that by reengaging General Tom Thumb, he would be enabled, as he expressed it, "to present to the public a quartet of the most wonderful, intelligent, and perfectly formed ladies and gentlemen in miniature the world ever produced."

This idea was carried out after my marriage; and as a preliminary that the public might have a glimpse of us together, when arrangements were made for the wedding, Minnie was chosen as bridesmaid, and the Commodore as groomsman.

I will now return to the events prior to the marriage, again quoting Mr. Barnum. "Of course, when the approaching marriage was announced, it created an immense excitement. Lavinia's levees at the museum were crowded to suffocation, and her photographs were in great demand. For several weeks she sold more than three hundred dollars' worth of her cartes-de-visite daily, and the receipts at the museum were over three thousand dollars a day. I engaged the General to exhibit and assist her in the sale of her photographs, to which his own picture was added. I could therefore afford to give them a fine weeding, and did so."

Mr. Barnum frankly confesses that the questions asked and the opposition raised in some quarters to this marriage became a source of pecuniary benefit to him, by giving it such publicity that it increased the crowds at the museum, and that because this, which irreverent people might call free advertising, he tried to defer the marriage, and that he offer Mr. Stratton and myself fifteen thousand dollars to postpone our marriage for one month and continue the exhibitions at the museum.

As the General and myself were expecting to marry each other, and not Mr. Barnum, and as, moreover, we were neither of us marrying for money, we did not quite see that a money offer was any part of the business; so we declined.

Mr. Barnum further says that he had many applications for tickets of admission to the church to witness the ceremony, some offering as high as sixty dollars; but he refused it, and not a single ticket was sold. Everybody in the church came by invitation, and thus the ceremony was conducted as would be any marriage of people less before the public. Whatever Mr. Barnum's peculiarities, he would not violate the wishes of friends, or the sanctities of a church ceremony.