QUOTE : As he recalled the fervor years later, “by means of systematized effort, large numbers of people of all ages, but especially the young, were converted” to born-again Christianity. “So great was the alarm awakened in the minds of some of these converts, that they became victims of religious frenzy….Many thousands of our citizens were influenced by the religious enthusiasm which was sweeping like a tornado through our land.” That young man was Phineas Barnum, known as P.T., who by his early twenties was earning a living in Connecticut selling lottery tickets. Coming of age during this period of avid belief in the unbelievable, Barnum had had his career-making, world-changing epiphany: he realized “the perfect good-nature with which the American public submits to a clever humbug.