Holden's Dollar Magazine on Jenny Lind

This brief item from a popular magazine of the 1850s reflects and satirizes the growing mania for Jenny Lind's concert tour. The references to selling slaves to raise money for concert tickets points to the national appeal of the Lind phenomenon at a time when tensions between the North and the South over slavery were increasing.

Come and hear her! Sell your old clothes, dispose of your antiquated boats, distribute your hats, hypothecate* your jewelry, come on the canal, work your passage, walk, take up a collection to pay expenses, raise money on a mortgage, sell "Tom" into perpetual slavery, dispose of "Mose" to the highest bidder, stop smoking for a year. . . and then come hear Jenny Lind.

*pawn

Source: Holden's Magazine reprinted in Detroit Free Press, November 14, 1850