Books: High Times

High Times*

Mr. Minnigerode Lights a Candle in Some Cupboards

Here are gathered four portraits from the days before P. T. Barnum had interpreted the genius of America.

Merchant Jumel. They slapped their thighs in the Merchants' Exchange; they discussed it in a nervous whisper in the Tontine Coffee House. Merchant Stephen Jumel, the richest man in Manhattan in 1800, had installed one Eliza Bowen in his mansion on Whitehall Street, bought her a fine carriage in which she paraded, the huzzy, to the disgruntlement of other matrons who, though formally wedded, had no carriages....

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