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Show Festive Affair Honors Barnum Connecticut City Grateful to Showman BRIDGEPORT, CONN. This city went all out with a three-ringed three-ringed din kept up several days in honor of the late Phineas Taylor Barnum, the legendary showman who in the distant yesteryear said: "There's a sucker born every minute." From early afternoon into late evening, the music blared, the banners ban-ners flapped and Bridgeport's men, women and children frolicked and danced in scores of streets, in community com-munity houses and In the armory at the Big Top Ball. All this was a reminder to young and old that P. T., as the souvenir program proclaimed, did for Bridgeport what a catalyst does for the chemist start all the good reactions re-actions and bring about the desired results. It was Bridgeport's first annual Barnum festival which will be repeated re-peated every year coinciding with the arrival of the big show, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. The circus arrived ar-rived for a two-day stand to bring the festival to a climax. Barnum might have been born in Bethel, 23 miles away, on July 15, 1810, but the guiding fathers want the world to know that Bridgeport was his preference. It was here that P. T. wintered his "Greatest Show on Earth," the small wagon affair that became the forerunner of the circus which inherits the slogan. Incidentally, ever mindful of getting get-ting the house packed, Phineas away back said: "Give 'em what they want," and proceeded to do just that. He imported the famed Jumbo, the elephant from England, and he discovered a midget, Charles Char-les S. Stratton, in this town, named him Gen. Tom Thumb and shared his fame. When inspiration was at a low ebb, Phineas had a mule painted with stripes and exhibited as a zebra |