PART VII.

MISCELLANEOUS.

7.1. The Cruise of the Polly Ann.

7.2. Artemus Ward's Autobiography.

7.3. The Serenade.

7.4. O'Bourcy's "Arrah-na-Pogue."

7.5. Artemus Ward among the Fenians.

7.6. Artemus Ward in Washington.

7.7. Scenes Outside the Fair Grounds.

7.8. The Wife.

7.9. A Juvenile Composition On the Elephant.

7.10. A Poem by the Same.

7.11. East Side Theatricals.

7.12. Soliloquy of a Low Thief.

7.13. The Negro Question.

7.14. Artemus Ward on Health.

7.15. A Fragment.

7.16. Brigham Young's Wives.

7.17. A. Ward's First Umbrella.

7.18. An Affecting Poem.

7.19. Mormon Bill of Fare.

7.20. "The Babes in the Wood."

7.21. Mr. Ward Attends a Graffick (Soiree.)

7.22. A. Ward Among the Mormons.--Reported by Himself--or Somebody Else.

* * *

PUBLISHERS' PREFACE TO THE NEW (1898) EDITION.

The present edition is of a work which has been for more than

thirty years prominently before the public, and which may justly

be said to have maintained a standard character. It is issued

because of a demand for a BETTER EDITION than has ever been

published.

In order to supply this acknowledged want, the publishers have

enlarged and perfected this edition by adding some matter not

heretofore published in book form.

More than one hundred thousand copies of the work have been

printed. The plates had become so worn as to render it

unreadable, yet the sale kept on. In preparing this new edition,

many of the author's fragmentary pieces, not contained in the old

edition, have been added. The earliest of the author's writings,

published in periodicals in 1862, are included, together with

many additional illustrations, which now, for the first time,

make the work complete.

It is universally conceded that no country in the world has ever

produced a genius like Artemus Ward. Writers of ACKNOWLEDGED

GENIUS are never very numerous. He attained a great and deserved

popularity, which will be lasting.

It has been observed that the wit of one generation is rarely

appreciated by the next, but this is not true of Artemus Ward.

There is a constant demand for his writings, for the reason that

his jokes require no appendix for their elucidation. No one who

speaks the English language can fail to appreciate his wonderful

humor. It will always be funny. There is a fascination about it

which can neither be questioned nor resisted. His particular

niche in the temple of Fame will not be claimed by another. His

intellect was sharp and electric. He saw the humor of anything

at a glance, and his manner of relating these laughter-provoking

absurdities is original and "fetching."

PRELIMINARY NOTES BY JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN.

Piccadilly, W. Jan. 30, 1865.

There is a story of two "smart" Yankees, one named Hosea and the

other Hezekiah, who met in an oyster shop in Boston. Said Hosea,

"As to opening oysters, why nothing's easier if you only know

how." "And how's how?" asked Hezekiah. "Scotch snuff," replied

Hosea, very gravely--"Scotch snuff. Bring a little of it ever so

near their noses, and they'll sneeze their lids off." "I know a

man who knows a better plan," observed Hezekiah. "He spreads the

bivalves in a circle, seats himself in the centre, reads a

chapter of Artemus Ward to them, and goes on until they get

interested. One by one they gape with astonishment at A. Ward's

whoppers, and as they gape my friend whips 'em out, peppers away,

and swallows 'em."

Excellent as all that Artemus Ward writes really is, and

exuberantly overflowing with humour as are nearly all his

articles, it is too bad to accuse him of telling "whoppers." On

the contrary, the old Horatian question of "Who shall forbid me

to speak truth in laughter?" seems ever present to his mind. His

latest production is the admirable paper "Artemus Ward among the

Fenians" which appears in Part 7.

If Artemus has on any occasion really told "whoppers," it has

been in his announcements of being about to visit England. From

time to time he has stated his intention of visiting this

country, and from time to time has he disappointed his English

friends.

He was coming to England after his trip to California, when,

laden with gold, he could think of no better place to spend it

in.

He was on his way to England when he and his companion, Mr.

Hingston, encountered the Pi-ute Indians, and narrowly escaped

scalping.

He was leaving for England with "Betsy Jane" and the "snaiks"

before the American war was ended.

He had unscrewed the head of each of his "wax figgers," and sent

each on board in a carpet-bag, labelled "For England," just as Mr

Lincoln was assassinated.

He was hastening to England when the news came a few weeks ago

that he had been blown up in an oil well!

He has been on his way to England in every newspaper of the

American Union for the last two years.

Here is the latest announcement:

"Artemus Ward, in a private letter, states that Doctor Kumming,

the famous London seer and profit, having foretold that the end

of the world will happen on his own birthday in January 1867, he,

Artemus, will not visit England until the latter end of 1866,

when the people there will be selling off, and dollars will be

plentiful. Mr. Ward says that he shall leave England in the last

steamer, in time to see the American eagle spread his wings, and

with the stars and stripes in his beek and tallents, sore away to

his knativ empyrehum.--" American Paper.

But even this is likely to be a "whopper," for a more reliable

private letter from Artemus declares his fixed purpose to leave

for England in the steamship City of Boston early in June; and

the probabilities are that he will be stepping on English shores

just about the time that these pages go to press.

Lest anything should happen to him, and England be for ever

deprived of seeing him, the most recent production of his pen,

together with two or three of his best things, are here embalmed

for preservation, on the principle adopted by the affectionate

widow of the bear-trainer of Perpignan. "I have nothing left,"

said the woman; "I am absolutely without a roof to shelter me and

the poor animal." "Animal!" exclaimed the prefect; "you don't

mean to say that you keep the bear that devoured your husband?"

"Alas!" she replied, "it is all that is left to me of the poor

dear man!"

If any other excuse be needed for thus presenting the British

public with A. Ward's "last," in addition to the pertinency of

the article and its real merit, that excuse may be found in the

fact that it is thoroughly new to readers on this side of the

Atlantic.

The general public will undoubtedly receive "Artemus Ward among

the Fenians" with approving laughter. Should it fall into the

hands of a philo-Fenian the effect may be different. To him it

would probably have the wrong action of the Yankee bone-picking

machine.

"I've got a new machine," said a Yankee pedlar, "for picking

bones out of fish. Now, I tell you, it's a leetle bit the

darndest thing you ever did see. All you have to do is to set it

on a table and turn a crank, and the fish flies right down your

throat and the bones right under the grate. Well, there was a

country greenhorn got hold of it the other day, and he turned the

crank the wrong way; and, I tell you, the way the bones flew down

his throat was awful. Why, it stuck that fellow so full of

bones, that he could not get his shirt off for a whole week!"

In addition to the paper on the Fenians, two other articles by

Artemus Ward are reprinted in the present work. One relates to

the city of Washington, and the other to the author's imaginary

town of Baldinsville. Both are highly characteristic of the

writer and of his quaint spellings--a heterography not more odd

than that of the postmaster of Shawnee County, Missouri, who,

returning his account to the General Office, wrote, "I hearby

sertify that the four going A-Counte is as nere Rite as I now how

to make It, if there is any mistake it is not Dun a purpers."

Artemus Ward has created a new model for funny writers; and the

fact is noticeable that, in various parts of this country as well

as in his own, he has numerous puny imitators, who suppose that

by simply adopting his comic spelling they can write quite as

well as he can. Perhaps it would be as well if they remembered

the joke of poor Thomas Hood, who said that he could write as

well as Shakespere if he had the mind to, but the trouble was--he

had not got the mind.

* * *

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY MELVILLE D. LANDON.

Charles Farrar Browne, better known to the world as "Artemus

Ward," was born at Waterford, Oxford County, Maine, on the

twenty-sixth of April, 1834, and died of consumption at

Southampton, England, on Wednesday, the sixth of March, 1867.

His father, Levi Browne, was a land surveyor, and Justice of the

Peace. His mother, Caroline E. Brown, is still living, and is a

descendant from Puritan stock.

Mr. Browne's business manager, Mr. Hingston, once asked him about

his Puritanic origin, when he replied: "I think we came from

Jerusalem, for my father's name was Levi and we had a Moses and a

Nathan in the family, but my poor brother's name was Cyrus; so,

perhaps, that makes us Persians."

Charles was partially educated at the Waterford school, when

family circumstances induced his parents to apprentice him to

learn the rudiments of printing in the office of the "Skowhegan

Clarion," published some miles to the north of his native

village. Here he passed through the dreadful ordeal to which a

printer's "devil" is generally subjected. He always kept his

temper; and his eccentric boy jokes are even now told by the

residents of Skowhegan.

In the spring, after his fifteenth birthday, Charles Browne bade

farewell to the "Skowhegan Clarion;" and we next hear of him in

the office of the "Carpet-Bag," edited by B.P. Shillaber ("Mrs.

Partington"). Lean, lank, but strangely appreciative, young

Browne used to "set up" articles from the pens of Charles G.

Halpine ("Miles O'Reilly") and John G. Saxe, the poet. Here he

wrote his first contribution in a disguised hand, slyly put it

into the editorial box, and the next day disguised his pleasure

while setting it up himself. The article was a description of a

Fourth of July celebration in Skowhegan. The spectacle of the

day was a representation of the battle of Yorktown, with G.

Washington and General Horace Cornwallis in character. The

article pleased Mr. Shillaber, and Mr. Browne, afterwards

speaking of it, said: "I went to the theatre that evening, had a

good time of it, and thought I was the greatest man in Boston."

While engaged on the "Carpet-Bag," the subject of our sketch

closely studied the theatre and courted the society of actors and

actresses. It was in this way that he gained that correct and

valuable knowledge of the texts and characters of the drama,

which enabled him in after years to burlesque them so

successfully. The humorous writings of Seba Smith were his

models, and the oddities of "John Phoenix" were his especial

admiration.

Being of a roving temper Charles Browne soon left Boston, and,

after traveling as a journeyman printer over much of New York and

Massachusetts, he turned up in the town of Tiffin, Seneca County,

Ohio, where he became reporter and compositor at four dollars per

week. After making many friends among the good citizens of

Tiffin, by whom he is remembered as a patron of side shows and

traveling circuses, our hero suddenly set out for Toledo, on the

lake, where he immediately made a reputation as a writer of

sarcastic paragraphs in the columns of the Toledo "Commercial."

He waged a vigorous newspaper war with the reporters of the

Toledo "Blade," but while the "Blade" indulged in violent

vituperation, "Artemus" was good-natured and full of humor. His

column soon gained a local fame and everybody read it. His fame

even traveled away to Cleveland, where, in 1858, when Mr. Browne

was twenty-four years of age, Mr. J.W. Gray of the Cleveland

"Plaindealer" secured him as local reporter, at a salary of

twelve-dollars per week. Here his reputation first began to

assume a national character and it was here that they called him

a "fool" when he mentioned the idea of taking the field as a

lecturer. Speaking of this circumstance while traveling down the

Mississippi with the writer, in 1865, Mr. Browne musingly

repeated this colloquy:

WISE MAN:--"Ah! you poor foolish little girl--here is a dollar

for you."

FOOLISH LITTLE GIRL:--"Thank you, sir; but I have a sister at

home as foolish as I am; can't you give me a dollar for her?"

Charles Browne was not successful as a NEWS reporter, lacking

enterprise and energy, but his success lay in writing up in a

burlesque manner well-known public affairs like prize-fights,

races, spiritual meetings, and political gatherings. His

department became wonderfully humorous, and was always a favorite

with readers, whether there was any news in it or not. Sometimes

he would have a whole column of letters from young ladies in

reply to a fancied matrimonial advertisement, and then he would

have a column of answers to general correspondents like this:--

VERITAS:--Many make the same error. Mr. Key, who wrote the "Star

Spangled Banner," is not the author of Hamlet, a tragedy. He

wrote the banner business, and assisted in "The Female Pirate,"

BUT DID NOT WRITE HAMLET. Hamlet was written by a talented but

unscrupulous man named Macbeth, afterwards tried and executed for

"murdering sleep."

YOUNG CLERGYMAN:--Two pints of rum, two quarts of hot water, tea-

cup of sugar, and a lemon; grate in nutmeg, stir thoroughly and

drink while hot.

It was during his engagement on the "Plaindealer" that he wrote,

dating from Indiana, his first communication,--the first

published letter following this sketch, signed "Artemus Ward" a

sobriquet purely incidental, but borne with the "u" changed to an

"a" by an American revolutionary general. It was here that Mr.

Browne first became, IN WORDS, the possessor of a moral show

"consisting of three moral bares, the a kangaroo (a amoozing

little rascal; 'twould make you larf yourself to death to see the

little kuss jump and squeal), wax figures of G. Washington, &c.

&c." Hundreds of newspapers copied this letter, and Charles

Browne awoke one morning to find himself famous.

In the "Plaindealer" office, his companion, George Hoyt, writes:

"His desk was a rickety table which had been whittled and gashed

until it looked as if it had been the victim of lightning. His

chair was a fit companion thereto,--a wabbling, unsteady affair,

sometimes with four and sometimes with three legs. But Browne

saw neither the table, nor the chair, nor any person who might be

near, nothing, in fact, but the funny pictures which were

tumbling out of his brain. When writing, his gaunt form looked

ridiculous enough. One leg hung over the arm of his chair like a

great hook, while he would write away, sometimes laughing to

himself, and then slapping the table in the excess of his mirth."

While in the office of the "Plaindealer," Mr. Browne first

conceived the idea of becoming a lecturer. In attending the

various minstrel shows and circuses which came to the city, he

would frequently hear repeated some story of his own which the

audience would receive with hilarity. His best witticisms came

back to him from the lips of another who made a living by quoting

a stolen jest. Then the thought came to him to enter the lecture

field himself, and become the utterer of his own witticisms--the

mouthpiece of his own jests.

On the 10th of November, 1860, Charles Browne, whose fame,

traveling in his letters from Boston to San Francisco, had now

become national, grasped the hands of his hundreds of New York

admirers. Cleveland had throned him the monarch of mirth, and a

thousand hearts paid him tributes of adulation as he closed his

connection with the Cleveland Press.

Arriving in the Empire City, Mr. Browne soon opened an engagement

with "Vanity Fair," a humorous paper after the manner of London

"Punch," and ere long he succeeded Mr. Charles G. Leland as

editor. Mr. Charles Dawson Shanly says: "After Artemus Ward

became sole editor, a position which he held for a brief period,

many of his best contributions were given to the public; and,

whatever there was of merit in the columns of "Vanity Fair" from

the time he assumed the editorial charge, emanated from his pen."

Mr. Browne himself wrote to a friend: "Comic copy is what they

wanted for "Vanity Fair." I wrote some and it killed it. The

poor paper got to be a conundrum, and so I gave it up."

The idea of entering the field as a lecturer now seized Mr.

Browne stronger than ever. Tired of the pen, he resolved on

trying the platform. His Bohemian friends agreed that his fame

and fortune would be made before intelligent audiences. He

resolved to try it. What should be the subject of my lecture?

How shall I treat the subject? These questions caused Mr. Browne

grave speculations. Among other schemes, he thought of a string

of jests combined with a stream of satire, the whole being

unconnected--a burlesque upon a lecture. The subject,--that was

a hard question. First he thought of calling it "My Seven

Grandmothers," but he finally adopted the name of "Babes in the

Woods," and with this subject Charles Browne was introduced to a

metropolitan audience, on the evening of December 23d, 1861. The

place was Clinton Hall, which stood on the site of the old Astor

Place Opera House, where years ago occurred the Macready riot,

and where now is the Mercantile Library. Previous to this

introduction, Mr. Frank Wood accompanied him to the suburban town

of Norwich, Connecticut, where he first delivered his lecture,

and watched the result. The audience was delighted, and Mr.

Browne received an ovation. Previous to his Clinton Hall

appearance the city was flooded with funny placards reading--

ARTEMUS WARD

WILL

SPEAK A PIECE.

Owing to a great storm, only a small audience braved the

elements, and the Clinton Hall lecture was not a financial

success. It consisted of a wandering batch of comicalities,

touching upon everything except "The Babes." Indeed it was

better described by the lecturer in London, when he said, "One of

the features of my entertainment is, that it contains so many

things that don't have anything to do with it."

In the middle of his lecture, the speaker would hesitate, stop,

and say: "Owing to a slight indisposition we will now have an

intermission of fifteen minutes." The audience looked in utter

dismay at the idea of staring at vacancy for a quarter of an

hour, when, rubbing his hands, the lecturer would continue:

"but, ah--during the intermission I will go on with my lecture!"

Mr. Browne's first volume, entitled "Artemus Ward; His Book," was

published in New York, May 17th, 1862. The volume was everywhere

hailed with enthusiasm, and over forty thousand copies were sold.

Great success also attended the sale of his three other volumes

published in '65, '67, and '69.

Mr. Browne's next lecture was entitled "Sixty Minutes in Africa,"

and was delivered in Musical Fund Hall, Philadelphia. Behind him

hung a large map of Africa, "which region," said Artemus,

"abounds in various natural productions, such as reptiles and

flowers. It produces the red rose, the white rose, and the neg-

roes. In the middle of the continent is what is called a

'howling wilderness,' but, for my part, I have never heard it

howl, nor met with any one who has."

After Mr. Browne had created immense enthusiasm for his lectures

and books in the Eastern States, which filled his pockets with a

handsome exchequer, he started, October 3d, 1863, for California,

a faithful account of which trip is given by himself in this

book. Previous to starting, he received a telegram from Thomas

Maguire, of the San Francisco Opera House, inquiring "what he

would TAKE FOR FORTY NIGHTS IN CALIFORNIA." Mr. Brown

immediately telegraphed back,--

"Brandy and water.

A. Ward."

And, though Maguire was sorely puzzled at the contents of the

dispatch, the Press got hold of it, and it went through

California as a capital joke.

Mr. Browne first lectured in San Francisco on "The Babes in the

Woods," November 13th, 1863, at Pratt's Hall. T. Starr King took

a deep interest in him, occupying the rostrum, and his general

reception in San Francisco was warm.

Returning overland, through Salt Lake to the States, in the fall

of 1864, Mr. Browne lectured again in New York, this time on the

"Mormons," to immense audiences, and in the spring of 1865 he

commenced his tour through the country, everywhere drawing

enthusiastic audiences both North and South.

It was while on this tour that the writer of this sketch again

spent some time with him. We met at Memphis and traveled down

the Mississippi together. At Lake Providence the "Indiana"

rounded up to our landing, and Mr. Browne accompanied the writer

to his plantation, where he spent several days, mingling in

seeming infinite delight with the negroes. For them he showed

great fondness, and they used to stand around him in crowds

listening to his seemingly serious advice. We could not prevail

upon him to hunt or to join in any of the equestrian amusements

with the neighboring planters, but a quiet fascination drew him

to the negroes. Strolling through the "quarters," his grave

words, too deep with humor for darkey comprehension, gained

their entire confidence. One day he called up Uncle Jeff., an

Uncle-Tom-like patriarch, and commenced in his usual vein: "Now,

Uncle Jefferson," he said, "why do you thus pursue the habits of

industry? This course of life is wrong--all wrong--all a base

habit, Uncle Jefferson. Now try to break it off. Look at me,--

look at Mr. Landon, the chivalric young Southern plantist FROM

NEW YORK, he toils not, neither does he spin; he pursues a career

of contented idleness. If you only thought so, Jefferson, you

could live for months WITHOUT PERFORMING ANY KIND OF LABOR, and

at the expiration of that time FEEL FRESH AND VIGOROUS ENOUGH TO

COMMENCE IT AGAIN. Idleness refreshes the physical organization

--IT IS A SWEET BOON! Strike at the roots of the destroying habit

to-day, Jefferson. It tires you out; resolve to be idle; no one

should labor; HE SHOULD HIRE OTHERS TO DO IT FOR HIM;" and then

he would fix his mournful eyes on Jeff. and hand him a dollar,

while the eyes of the wonder-struck darkey would gaze in mute

admiration upon the good and wise originator of the only theory

which the darkey mind could appreciate. As Jeff. went away to

tell the wonderful story to his companions, and backed it with

the dollar as material proof, Artemus would cover his eyes, and

bend forward on his elbows in a chuckling laugh.

"Among the Mormons" was delivered through the States, everywhere

drawing immense crowds. His manner of delivering his discourse

was grotesque and comical beyond description. His quaint and sad

style contributed more than anything else to render his

entertainment exquisitely funny. The programme was exceedingly

droll, and the tickets of admission presented the most ludicrous

of ideas. The writer presents a fac-simile of an admission

ticket which was presented to him in Natchez by Mr. Browne:--

ADMIT THE BEARER

AND ONE WIFE.

YOURS TROOLY,

A. WARD.

In the spring of 1866, Charles Browne first timidly thought of

going to Europe. Turning to Mr. Hingston one day he asked:

"What sort of a man is Albert Smith? Do you think the Mormons

would be as good a subject to the Londoners as Mont Blanc was?"

Then he said: "I should like to go to London and give my lecture

in the same place. Can't it be done?"

Mr. Browne sailed for England soon after, taking with him his

Panorama. The success that awaited him could scarcely have been

anticipated by his most intimate friends. Scholars, wits, poets,

and novelists came to him with extended hands, and his stay in

London was one ovation to the genius of American wit. Charles

Reade, the novelist, was his warm friend and enthusiastic

admirer; and Mr. Andrew Haliday introduced him to the "Literary

Club," where he became a great favorite. Mark Lemon came to him

and asked him to become a contributor to "Punch," which he did.

His "Punch" letters were more remarked in literary circles than

any other current matter. There was hardly a club-meeting or a

dinner at which they were not discussed. "There was something so

grotesque in the idea," said a correspondent, "of this ruthless

Yankee poking among the revered antiquities of Britain, that the

beef-eating British themselves could not restrain their laughter."

The story of his Uncle William who "followed commercial pursuits,

glorious commerce--and sold soap," and his letters on the Tower

and "Chowser," were palpable hits, and it was admitted that

"Punch" had contained nothing better since the days of

"Yellowplush." This opinion was shared by the "Times," the

literary reviews, and the gayest leaders of society. The

publishers of "Punch" posted up his name in large letters over

their shop in Fleet Street, and Artemus delighted to point it out

to his friends. About this time Mr. Browne wrote to his friend

Jack Rider, of Cleveland:

"This is the proudest moment of my life. To have been as well

appreciated here as at home; to have written for the oldest comic

Journal in the English language, received mention with Hood, with

Jerrold and Hook, and to have my picture and my pseudonym as

common in London as in New York, is enough for

"Yours truly,

"A. Ward."

England was thoroughly aroused to the merits of Artemus Ward,

before he commenced his lectures at Egyptian Hall, and when, in

November, he finally appeared, immense crowds were compelled to

turn away. At every lecture his fame increased, and when

sickness brought his brilliant success to an end, a nation

mourned his retirement.

On the evening of Friday, the seventh week of his engagement at

Egyptian Hall, Artemus became seriously ill, an apology was made

to a disappointed audience, and from that time the light of one

of the greatest wits of the centuries commenced fading into

darkness. The Press mourned his retirement, and a funeral pall

fell over London. The laughing, applauding crowds were soon to

see his consumptive form moving towards its narrow resting-place

in the cemetery at Kensal Green.

By medical advice Charles Browne went for a short time to the

Island of Jersey--but the breezes of Jersey were powerless. He

wrote to London to his nearest and dearest friends--the members

of a literary club of which he was a member--to complain that his

"loneliness weighed on him." He was brought back, but could not

sustain the journey farther than Southampton. There the members

of the club traveled from London to see him--two at a time--that

he might be less lonely.

His remains were followed to the grave from the rooms of his

friend Arthur Sketchley, by a large number of friends and

admirers, the literati and press of London paying the last

tribute of respect to their dead brother. The funeral services

were conducted by the Rev. M.D. Conway, formerly of Cincinnati,

and the coffin was temporarily placed in a vault, from which it

was removed by his American friends, and his body now sleeps by

the side of his father, Levi Browne, in the quiet cemetery at

Waterford, Maine. Upon the coffin is the simple inscription:--

"CHARLES F. BROWNE,

AGED 32 YEARS,

Better Known to the World as 'Artemus Ward.'"

His English executors were T.W. Robertson, the playwright, and

his friend and companion, E.P. Hingston. His literary executors

were Horace Greeley and Richard H. Stoddard. In his will, he

bequeathed among other things a large sum of money to his little

valet, a bright little fellow; though subsequent denouments

revealed the fact that he left only a six-thousand-dollar house

in Yonkers. There is still some mystery about his finances,

which may one day be revealed. It is known that he withdrew

10,000 dollars from the Pacific Bank to deposit it with a friend

before going to England; besides this, his London "Punch" letters

paid a handsome profit. Among his personal friends were George

Hoyt, the late Daniel Setchell, Charles W. Coe, and Mr. Mullen,

the artist, all of whom he used to style "my friends all the year

round."

Personally Charles Farrar Browne was one of the kindest and most

affectionate of men, and history does not name a man who was so

universally beloved by all who knew him. It was remarked, and

truly, that the death of no literary character since Washington

Irving caused such general and widespread regret.

In stature he was tall and slender. His nose was prominent,--

outlined like that of Sir Charles Napier, or Mr. Seward; his eyes

brilliant, small, and close together; his mouth large, teeth

white and pearly; fingers long and slender; hair soft, straight,

and blonde; complexion florid; mustache large, and his voice soft

and clear. In bearing, he moved like a natural-born gentleman.

In his lectures he never smiled--not even while he was giving

utterance to the most delicious absurdities; but all the while

the jokes fell from his lips as if he was unconscious of their

meaning. While writing his lectures, he would laugh and chuckle

to himself continually.

There was one peculiarity about Charles Browne--HE NEVER MADE AN

ENEMY. Other wits in other times have been famous, but a

satirical thrust now and then has killed a friend. Diogenes was

the wit of Greece, but when, after holding up an old dried fish

to draw away the eyes of Anaximenes' audience, he exclaimed "See

how an old fish is more interesting than Anaximenes," he said a

funny thing, but he stabbed a friend. When Charles Lamb, in

answer to the doting mother's question as to how he liked babies,

replied, "b-b-boiled, madam, BOILED!" that mother loved him no

more: and when John Randolph said "THANK YOU!" to his

constituent who kindly remarked that he had the pleasure of

PASSING his house, it was wit at the expense of friendship. The

whole English school of wits--with Douglas Jerrold, Hood,

Sheridan, and Sidney Smith, indulged in repartee. They were

PARASITIC wits. And so with the Irish, except that an Irishman

is generally so ridiculously absurd in his replies as to only

excite ridicule. "Artemus Ward" made you laugh and love him too.

The wit of "Artemus Ward" and "Josh Billings" is distinctively

American. Lord Kames, in his "Elements of Criticism," makes no

mention of this species of wit, a lack which the future

rhetorician should look to. We look in vain for it in the

English language of past ages, and in other languages of modern

time. It is the genus American. When Artemus says in that

serious manner, looking admiringly at his atrocious pictures,--"I

love pictures--and I have many of them--beautiful photographs--of

myself;" you smile; and when he continues, "These pictures were

painted by the Old Masters; they painted these pictures and then

they--they expired;" you hardly know what it is that makes you

laugh outright; and when Josh Billings says in his Proverbs,

wiser than Solomon's "You'd better not know so much, than know so

many things that ain't so;"--the same vein is struck, but the

text-books fail to explain scientifically the cause of our mirth.

The wit of Charles Browne is of the most exalted kind. It is

only scholars and those thoroughly acquainted with the SUBTILTY

of our language who fully appreciate it. His wit is generally

about historical personages like Cromwell, Garrick, or

Shakspeare, or a burlesque on different styles of writing, like

his French novel, when hifalutin phrases of tragedy come from the

clodhopper who--"sells soap and thrice--refuses a ducal coronet."

Mr. Browne mingled the eccentric even in his business letters.

Once he wrote to his Publisher, Mr. G.W. Carleton, who had made

some alterations in his MSS.: "The next book I write I'm going

to get YOU to write." Again he wrote in 1863:

"Dear Carl:--You and I will get out a book next spring, which

will knock spots out of all comic books in ancient or modern

history. And the fact that you are going to take hold of it

convinces me that you have one of the most MASSIVE intellects of

this or any other epoch.

"Yours, my pretty gazelle,

"A. Ward."

When Charles F. Browne died, he did not belong to America, for,

as with Irving and Dickens, the English language claimed him.

Greece alone did not suffer when the current of Diogenes' wit

flowed on to death. Spain alone did not mourn when Cervantes,

dying, left Don Quixote, the "knight of la Mancha." When Charles

Lamb ceased to tune the great heart of humanity to joy and

gladness, his funeral was in every English and American household;

and when Charles Browne took up his silent resting-place in the

sombre shades of Kensal Green, JESTING CEASED, and one great

Anglo-American heart,

Like a muffled drum went beating

Funeral marches to his grave.

MELVILLE D. LANDON.

INTRODUCTION BY T.W. ROBERTSON.

Few tasks are more difficult or delicate than to write on the

subject of the works or character of a departed friend. The pen

falters as the familiar face looks out of the paper. The mind is

diverted from the thought of death as the memory recalls some happy

epigram. It seems so strange that the hand that traced the jokes

should be cold, that the tongue that trolled out the good things

should be silent--that the jokes and the good things should remain,

and the man who made them should be gone for ever.

The works of Charles Farrar Browne--who was known to the world as

"Artemus Ward"--have run through so many editions, have met with

such universal popularity, and have been so widely criticised, that

it is needless to mention them here. So many biographies have been

written of the gentleman who wrote in the character of the 'cute

Yankee Showman, that it is unnecessary that I should touch upon his

life, belongings, or adventures. Of "Artemus Ward" I know just as

much as the rest of the world. I prefer, therefore, to speak of

Charles Farrar Browne, as I knew him, and, in doing so, I can

promise those friends who also knew him and esteemed him, that as I

consider no "public" man so public, that some portion of his work,

pleasures, occupations, and habits may not be considered private, I

shall only mention how kind and noble-minded was the man of whom I

write, without dragging forward special and particular acts in proof

of my words, as if the goodness of his mind and character needed the

certificate of facts.

I first saw Charles Browne at a literary club; he had only been a

few hours in London, and he seemed highly pleased and excited at

finding himself in the old city to which his thoughts had so often

wandered. Browne was an intensely sympathetic man. His brain and

feelings were as a "lens," and he received impressions immediately.

No man could see him without liking him at once. His manner was

straightforward and genial, and had in it the dignity of a

gentleman, tempered, as it were, by the fun of the humorist. When

you heard him talk you wanted to make much of him, not because he

was "Artemus Ward," but because he was himself, for no one less

resembled "Artemus Ward" than his author and creator, Charles Farrar

Browne. But a few weeks ago it was remarked to me that authors were

a disappointing race to know, and I agreed with the remark, and I

remember a lady once said to me that the personal appearance of

poets seldom "came up" to their works. To this I replied that,

after all, poets were but men, and that it was as unreasonable to

expect that the late Sir Walter Scott could at all resemble a

Gathering of the Clans as that the late Lord Macaulay should appear

anything like the Committal of the Seven Bishops to the Tower. I

told the lady that she was unfair to eminent men if she hoped that

celebrated engineers would look like tubular bridges, or that Sir

Edwin Landseer would remind her of a "Midsummer Night's Dream." I

mention this because, of all men in the world, my friend Charles

Browne was the least like a showman of any man I ever encountered.

I can remember the odd half disappointed look of some of the

visitors to the Egyptian Hall when "Artemus" stepped upon the

platform. At first they thought that he was a gentleman who

appeared to apologise for the absence of the showman. They had

pictured to themselves a coarse old man, with a damp eye and a

puckered mouth, one eyebrow elevated an inch above the other to

express shrewdness and knowledge of the world--a man clad in

velveteen and braid, with a heavy watch-chain, large rings, and

horny hands, the touter to a waxwork show, with a hoarse voice, and

over familiar manner. The slim gentleman in evening dress, polished

manners, and gentle voice, with a tone of good breeding that hovered

between deference and jocosity; the owner of those thin--those much

too thin--white hands could not be the man who spelt joke with a

"g." Folks who came to laugh, began to fear that they should remain

to be instructed, until the gentlemanly disappointer began to speak,

then they recovered their real "Artemus," Betsy Jane, wax-figgers,

and all. Will patriotic Americans forgive me if I say that Charles

Browne loved England dearly! He had been in London but a few days

when he paid a visit to the Tower. He knew English history better

than most Englishmen; and the Tower of London was to him the history

of England embalmed in stone and mortar. No man had more reverence

in his nature; and at the Tower he saw that what he had read was

real. There were the beef-eaters; there had been Queen Elizabeth

and Sir Walter Raleigh, and Lady Jane Grey, and Shakspere's murdered

princes, and their brave, cruel uncle. There was the block and the

axe, and the armour and the jewels. "St George for Merrie England!"

had been shouted in the Holy Land, and men of the same blood as

himself had been led against the infidel by men of the same brain

and muscle as George Washington. Robin Hood was a reality, and not

a schoolboy's myth like Ali Baba and Valentine and Orson.

There were two sets of feelings in Charles Browne at the Tower. He

could appreciate the sublimity of history, but, as the "Show" part

of the exhibition was described to him, the humorist, the wit, and

the iconoclast from the other side the Atlantic must have smiled at

the "descriptions." The "Tower" was a "show," like his own--Artemus

Ward's. A price was paid for admission, and the "figgers" were

"orated." Real jewellery is very like sham jewellery after all, and

the "Artemus" vein in Charles Browne's mental constitution--the vein

of humour, whose source was a strong contempt of all things false,

mean, shabby, pretentious, and only external--of bunkum and

Barnumisation--must have seen a gigantic speculation realising

shiploads of dollars if the Tower could have been taken over to the

States, and exhibited from town to town--the Stars and Stripes flying

over it--with a four-horse lecture to describe the barbarity of the

ancient British Barons and the cuss of chivalry.

Artemus Ward's Lecture on the Mormons at the Egyptian Hall,

Piccadilly, was a great success. His humour was so entirely fresh,

new, and unconventional, it took his hearers by surprise, and

charmed them. His failing health compelled him to abandon the

lecture after about eight or ten weeks. Indeed, during that brief

period he was once or twice compelled to dismiss his audience. I

have myself seen him sink into a chair and nearly faint after the

exertion of dressing. He exhibited the greatest anxiety to be at

his post at the appointed time, and scrupulously exerted himself to

the utmost to entertain his auditors. It was not because he was

sick that the public was to be disappointed, or that their enjoyment

was to be diminished. During the last few weeks of his

lecture-giving he steadily abstained from accepting any of the

numerous invitations he received. Had he lived through the

following London fashionable season, there is little doubt that the

room at the Egyptian Hall would have been thronged nightly. Our

aristocracy have a fine delicate sense of humour, and the success,

artistic and pecuniary, of "Artemus Ward" would have rivalled that

of the famous "Lord Dundreary." There are many stupid people who

did not understand the "fun" of Artemus Ward's books. In their

vernacular "they didn't see it." There were many stupid people who

did not understand the fun of Artemus Ward's lecture on the Mormons.

They could not see it. Highly respectable people--the pride of

their parish, when they heard of a lecture "upon the Mormons"-

-expected to see a solemn person, full of old saws and new

statistics, who would denounce the sin of polygamy, and bray against

polygamists with four-and-twenty boiling-water Baptist power of

denunciation. These uncomfortable Christians do not like humour.

They dread it as a certain personage is said to dread holy water,

and for the same reason that thieves fear policemen--it finds them

out. When these good idiots heard Artemus offer, if they did not

like the lecture in Piccadilly, to give them free tickets for the

same lecture in California, when he next visited that country, they

turned to each other indignantly, and said "What use are tickets for

California to us? We are not going to California. No! we are too

good, too respectable, to go so far from home. The man is a fool!"

One of these ornaments of the vestry complained to the doorkeepers,

and denounced the lecture as an imposition; "and," said the wealthy

parishioner, "as for the panorama, it's the worst painted thing I

ever saw in all my life!"

But the entertainment, original, humorous, and racy though it was,

was drawing to a close! In the fight between youth and death, death

was to conquer. By medical advice Charles Browne went for a short

time to Jersey--but the breezes of Jersey were powerless. He wrote

to London to his nearest and dearest friends--the members of a

literary club of which he was a member--to complain that his

"loneliness weighed on him." He was brought back, but could not

sustain the journey farther than Southampton. There the members of

the beforementioned club travelled from London to see him--two at a

time--that he might be less lonely--and for the unwearying

solicitude of his friend and agent, Mr. Hingston, and to the kindly

sympathy of the United States Consul at Southampton, Charles

Browne's best and dearest friends had cause to be grateful. I

cannot close these lines without mention of "Artemus Ward's" last

joke. He had read in the newspapers that a wealthy American had

offered to present the Prince of Wales with a splendid yacht,

American built.

"It seems," said the invalid, "a fashion now-a-days for everybody to

present the Prince of Wales with something. I think I shall leave

him--my panorama!"

Charles Browne died beloved and regretted by all who knew him, and

by many who had known him but a few weeks; and when he drew his last

breath, there passed away the Spirit of a true gentleman.

T.W. ROBERTSON

London, August 11, 1868.

PREFATORY NOTE

BY EDWARD P. HINGSTON.

In Cleveland, Ohio, the pleasant city beside the lakes, Artemus Ward

first determined to become a public lecturer. He and I rambled

through Cleveland together after his return from California. He

called on some old friends at the Herald office, then went over to

the Weddel House, and afterwards strolled across to the offices of

the "Plain Dealer", where, in his position as sub-editor, he had

written many of his earlier essays. Artemus inquired for Mr. Gray,

the editor, who chanced to be absent. Looking round at the vacant

desks and inkstained furniture, Artemus was silent for a minute or

two, and then burst into one of those peculiar chuckling fits of

laughter in which he would occasionally indulge; not a loud laugh,

but a shaking of the whole body with an impulse of merriment which

set every muscle in motion. "Here," said he, "here's where they

called me a fool." The remembrance of their so calling him seemed

to afford him intense amusement.

>From the office of the Cleveland Plain Dealer we continued our tour

of the town. Presently we found ourselves in front of Perry's

statue, the monument erected to commemorate the naval engagement on

Lake Erie, wherein the Americans came off victorious. Artemus

looked up to the statue, laid his finger to the side of his nose,

and, in his quaint manner, remarked, "I wonder whether they called

him 'a fool' too, when he went to fight!"

The remark, following close as it did upon his laughing fit in the

newspaper office, caused me to inquire why he had been called "a

fool," and who had called him so.

"It was the opinion of my friends on the paper," he replied. "I

told them that I was going in for lecturing. They laughed at me,

and called me `a fool.' Don't you think they were right?"

Then we sauntered up Euclid Street, under the shade of its avenue of

trees. As we went along, Artemus Ward recounted to me the story of

his becoming a lecturer. Our conversation on that agreeable evening

is fresh in my remembrance. Memory still listens to the voice of my

companion in the stroll, still sees the green trees of Euclid Street

casting their shadows across our path, and still joins in the laugh

with Artemus, who, having just returned from California, where he

had taken sixteen hundred dollars at one lecture, did not think that

to be evidence of his having lost his senses.

The substance of that which Artemus Ward then told me was, that

while writing for the "Cleveland Plain Dealer" he was accustomed, in

the discharge of his duties as a reporter, to attend the

performances of the various minstrel troups and circuses which

visited the neighbourhood. At one of these he would hear some story

of his own, written a month or two previously, given by the

"middle-man" of the minstrels and received with hilarity by the

audience. At another place he would be entertained by listening to

jokes of his own invention, coarsely retailed by the clown of the

ring, and shouted at by the public as capital waggery on the part of

the performer. His own good things from the lips of another "came

back to him with alienated majesty," as Emerson expresses it. Then

the thought would steal over him--Why should that man gain a living

with my witticisms, and I not use them in the same way myself? why

not be the utterer of my own coinage, the quoter of my own jests,

the mouthpiece of my own merry conceits? Certainly, it was not a

very exalted ambition to aim at the glories of a circus clown or the

triumphs of a minstrel with a blackened face. But, in the United

States a somewhat different view is taken of that which is fitting

and seemly for a man to do, compared with the estimate we form in

this country. In a land where the theory of caste is not admitted,

the relative respectability of the various professions is not quite

the same as it is with us. There the profession does not disqualify

if the man himself be right, nor the claim to the title of gentleman

depend upon the avocation followed. I know of one or two clowns in

the ring who are educated physicians, and not thought to be any the

less gentlemen because they propound conundrums and perpetrate jests

instead of prescribing pills and potions.

Artemus Ward was always very self-reliant; when once he believed

himself to be in the right it was almost impossible to persuade him

to the contrary. But, at the same time, he was cautious in the

extreme, and would well consider his position before deciding that

which was right or wrong for him to do. The idea of becoming a

public man having taken possession of his mind, the next point to

decide was in what form he should appear before the public. That of

a humorous lecturer seemed to him to be the best. It was unoccupied

ground. America had produced entertainers who by means of facial

changes or eccentricities of costume had contrived to amuse their

audiences, but there was no one who ventured to joke for an hour

before a house full of people with no aid from scenery or dress.

The experiment was one which Artemus resolved to try. Accordingly,

he set himself to work to collect all his best quips and cranks, to

invent what new drolleries he could, and to remember all the good

things that he had heard or met with. These he noted down and

strung together almost without relevancy or connexion. The

manuscript chanced to fall into the hands of the people at the

office of the newspaper on which he was then employed, and the

question was put to him of what use he was going to make of the

strange jumble of jest which he had thus compiled. His answer was

that he was about to turn lecturer, and that before them were the

materials of his lecture. It was then that his friends laughed at

him, and characterised him as "a fool."

"They had some right to think so," said Artemus to me as we rambled

up Euclid Street. "I half thought that I was one myself. I don't

look like a lecturer--do I?"

He was always fond, poor fellow, of joking on the subject of his

personal appearance. His spare figure and tall stature, his

prominent nose and his light-colored hair, were each made the

subject of a joke at one time or another in the course of his

lecturing career. If he laughed largely at the foibles of others,

he was equally disposed to laugh at any shortcomings he could detect

in himself. If anything at all in his outward form was to him a

source of vanity, it was the delicate formation of his hands.

White, soft, long, slender, and really handsome, they were more like

the hands of a high-born lady than those of a Western editor. He

attended to them with careful pride, and never alluded to them as a

subject for his jokes, until, in his last illness, they had become

unnaturally fair, translucent, and attenuated. Then it was that a

friend calling upon him at his apartments in Piccadilly, endeavoured

to cheer him at a time of great mental depression, and pleasantly

reminded him of a ride they had long ago projected through the

South-Western States of the Union. "We must do that ride yet,

Artemus. Short stages at first, and longer ones as we go on." Poor

Artemus lifted up his pale, slender hands, and letting the light

shine through them, said jocosely, "Do you think these would do to

hold a rein with? Why, the horse would laugh at them."

Having collected a sufficient number of quaint thoughts, whimsical

fancies, bizarre notions, and ludicrous anecdotes, the difficulty

which then, according to his own confession, occurred to Artemus

Ward was, what should be the title of his lecture. The subject was

no difficulty at all, for the simple reason that there was not to be

any. The idea of instructing or informing his audience never once

entered into his plans. His intention was merely to amuse; if

possible, keep the house in continuous laughter for an hour and a

half, or rather an hour and twenty minutes, for that was the precise

time, in his belief, which people could sit to listen and to laugh

without becoming bored; and, if possible, send his audience home

well pleased with the lecturer and with themselves, without their

having any clear idea of that which they had been listening to, and

not one jot the wiser than when they came. No one better understood

than Artemus the wants of a miscellaneous audience who paid their

dollar or half-dollar each to be amused. No one could gauge better

than he the capacity of the crowd to feed on pure fun, and no one

could discriminate more clearly than he the fitness, temper, and

mental appetite of the constituents of his evening assemblies. The

prosiness of an ordinary Mechanics' Institute lecture was to him

simply abhorrent; the learned platitudes of a professed lecturer

were to him, to use one of his own phrases, "worse than poison." To

make people laugh was to be his primary endeavour. If in so making

them laugh he could also cause them to see through a sham, be

ashamed of some silly national prejudice, or suspicious of the value

of some current piece of political bunkum, so much the better. He

believed in laughter as thoroughly wholesome; he had the firmest

conviction that fun is healthy, and sportiveness the truest sign of

sanity. Like Talleyrand, he was of opinion that "Qui vit sans jolie

n'est pas si sage qu'il croit."

Artemus Ward's first lecture was entitled "The Babes in the Wood."

I asked him why he chose that title, because there was nothing

whatever in the lecture relevant to the subject of the child-book

legend. He replied, "It seemed to sound the best. I once thought

of calling the lecture 'My Seven Grandmothers.' Don't you think

that would have been good?" It would at any rate have been just as

pertinent.

Incongruity as an element of fun was always an idea uppermost in the

mind of the Western humorist. I am not aware that the notes of any

of his lectures, except those of his Mormon experience, have been

preserved, and I have some doubts if any one of his lectures, except

the Mormon one, was ever fairly written out. "The Babes in the

Wood," as a lecture, was a pure and unmitigated "sell." It was

merely joke after joke, and drollery succeeding to drollery, without

any connecting thread whatever. It was an exhibition of fireworks,

owing half its brilliancy and more than half its effect to the skill

of the man who grouped the fireworks together and let them off. In

the hands of any other pyrotechnist the squibs would have failed to

light, the rockets would have refused to ascend, and the

"nine-bangers" would have exploded but once or twice only, instead

of nine times. The artist of the display being no more, and the

fireworks themselves having gone out, it is perhaps not to be

regretted that the cases of the squibs and the tubes of the rockets

have not been carefully kept. Most of the good things introduced by

Artemus Ward in his first lecture were afterwards incorporated by

him in subsequent writings, or used over again in his later

entertainment. Many of them had reference to the events of the day,

the circumstances of the American War and the politics of the Great

Rebellion. These, of course, have lost their interest with the

passing away of the times which gave them birth. The points of many

of the jokes have corroded, and the barbed head of many an arrow of

Artemus's wit has rusted into bluntness with the decay of the bow

from which it was propelled.

If I remember rightly, the "Babes in the Wood" were never mentioned

more than twice in the whole lecture. First, when the lecturer told

his audience that the "Babes" were to constitute the subject of his

discourse, and then digressed immediately to matters quite foreign

to the story. Then again at the conclusion of the hour and twenty

minutes of drollery, when he finished up in this way: "I now come to

my subject 'The Babes in the Wood.'" Here he would take out his

watch, look at it with affected surprise, put on an appearance of

being greatly perplexed, and amidst roars of laughter from the

people, very gravely continue, "But I find that I have exceeded my

time, and will therefore merely remark that, so far as I know, they

were very good babes--they were as good as ordinary babes. I really

have not time to go into their history. You will find it all in the

story-books. They died in the woods, listening to the woodpecker

tapping the hollow beech-tree. It was a sad fate for them, and I

pity them. So, I hope, do you. Good night!"

Artemus gave his first lecture at Norwich in Connecticut, and

travelled over a considerable portion of the Eastern States before

he ventured to give a sample of his droll oratory in the Western

cities, wherein he had earned reputation as a journalist. Gradually

his popularity became very great, and in place of letting himself

out at so much per night to literary societies and athenaeums, he

constituted himself his own showman, engaging that indispensable

adjunct to all showmen in the United States, an agent to go ahead,

engage halls, arrange for the sale of tickets, and engineer the

success of the show. Newspapers had carried his name to every

village of the Union, and his writings had been largely quoted in

every journal. It required, therefore, comparatively little

advertising to announce his visit to any place in which he had to

lecture. But it was necessary that he should have a bill or poster

of some kind. The one he adopted was simple, quaint, striking, and

well adapted to the purpose. It was merely one large sheet, with a

black ground, and the letters cut out in the block, so as to print

white. The reading was "Artemus Ward will Speak a Piece." To the

American mind this was intensely funny from its childish absurdity.

It is customary in the States for children to speak or recite "a

piece" at school at the annual examination, and the phrase is used

just in the same sense as in England we say "a Christmas piece."

The professed subject of the lecture being that of a story familiar

to children, harmonised well with the droll placard which announced

its delivery. The place and time were notified on a slip pasted

beneath. To emerge from the dull depths of lyceum committees and

launch out as a showman-lecturer on his own responsibility, was

something both novel and bold for Artemus to do. In the majority of

instances he or his agent met with speculators who were ready to

engage him for so many lectures, and secure to the lecturer a

certain fixed sum. But in his later transactions Artemus would have

nothing to do with them, much preferring to undertake all the risk

himself. The last speculator to whom he sold himself for a tour

was, I believe, Mr. Wilder, of New York City, who realised a large

profit by investing in lecturing stock, and who was always ready to

engage a circus, a wild-beast show, or a lecturing celebrity.

As a rule Artemus Ward succeeded in pleasing every one in his

audience, especially those who understood the character of the man

and the drift of his lecture; but there were not wanting at any of

his lectures a few obtuse-minded, slowly-perceptive, drowsy-headed

dullards, who had not the remotest idea what the entertainer was

talking about, nor why those around him indulged in laughter.

Artemus was quick to detect these little spots upon the sunny face

of his auditory. He would pick them out, address himself at times

to them especially, and enjoy the bewilderment of his Boeotian

patrons. Sometimes a stolid inhabitant of central New York,

evidently of Dutch extraction, would regard him with an open stare

expressive of a desire to enjoy that which was said if the point of

the joke could by any possibility be indicated to him. At other

times a demure Pennsylvania Quaker would benignly survey the poor

lecturer with a look of benevolent pity; and on one occasion, when

my friend was lecturing at Peoria, an elderly lady, accompanied by

her two daughters, left the room in the midst of the lecture,

exclaiming, as she passed me at the door, "It is too bad of people

to laugh at a poor young man who doesn't know what he is saying, and

ought to be sent to a lunatic asylum!"

The newspaper reporters were invariably puzzled in attempting to

give any correct idea of a lecture by Artemus Ward. No report could

fairly convey an idea of the entertainment; and being fully aware of

this, Artemus would instruct his agent to beg of the papers not to

attempt giving any abstract of that which he said. The following is

the way in which the reporter of the Golden Era, at San Francisco,

California, endeavoured to inform the San Franciscan public of the

character of "The Babes in the Wood" lecture. It is, as the reader

will perceive, a burlesque on the way in which Artemus himself dealt

with the topic he had chosen; while it also notes one or two of the

salient features of my friend's style of Lecturing:

"HOW ARTEMUS WARD 'SPOKE A PIECE.'"

"Artemus has arrived. Artemus has spoken. Artemus has triumphed.

Great is Artemus!

"Great also is Platt's Hall. But Artemus is greater; for the hall

proved too small for his audience, and too circumscribed for the

immensity of his jokes. A man who has drank twenty bottles of wine

may be called `full.' A pint bottle with a quart of water in it

would also be accounted full; and so would an hotel be, every bed in

it let three times over on the same night to three different

occupants; but none of these would be so full as Platt's Hall was on

Friday night to hear Artemus Ward `speak a piece.'

"The piece selected was `The Babes in the Wood,' which reminds us

that Mr. Ward is a tall, slender-built, fair-complexioned,

jovial-looking gentleman of about twenty-seven years of age. He has

a pleasant manner, an agreeable style, and a clear, distinct, and

powerful voice.

"'The Babes in the Wood' is a 'comic oration,' with a most

comprehensive grasp of subject. As spoken by its witty author, it

elicited gusto of laughter and whirlwinds of applause. Mr. Ward is

no prosy lyceum lecturer. His style is neither scientific,

didactic, or philosophical. It is simply that of a man who is

brimful of mirth, wit, and satire, and who is compelled to let it

flow forth. Maintaining a very grave countenance himself, he plays

upon the muscles of other people's faces as though they were piano-

strings, and he the prince of pianists.

"The story of 'The Babes in the Wood' is interesting in the extreme.

We would say, en passant, however, that Artemus Ward is a perfect

steam factory of puns and a museum of American humour. Humanity

seems to him to be a vast mine, out of which he digs tons of fun;

and life a huge forest, in which he can cut down 'cords' of

comicality. Language with him is like the brass balls with which

the juggler amuses us at the circus--ever being tossed up, ever

glittering, ever thrown about at pleasure. We intended to report

his lecture in full, but we laughed till we split our lead pencil,

and our shorthand symbols were too infused with merriment to remain

steady on the paper. However, let us proceed to give an idea of

'The Babes in the Wood.' In the first place, it is a comic oration;

that is, it is spoken, is exuberant in fun, felicitous in fancy,

teeming with jokes, and sparkling as bright waters on a sunny day.

The 'Babes in the Wood' is--that is, it isn't a lecture or an

oratorical effort; it is something sui generis; something reserved

for our day and generation, which it would never have done for our

forefathers to have known, or they would have been too mirthful to

have attended to the business of preparing the world for our coming;

and something which will provoke so much laughter in our time, that

the echo of the laughs will reverberate along the halls of futurity,

and seriously affect the nerves of future generations.

"The 'Babes in the Wood,' to describe it, is--Well, those who

listened to it know best. At any rate, they will acknowledge with

us that it was a great success, and that Artemus Ward has a fortune

before him in California.

"And now to tell the story of 'The Babes in the Wood'--But we will

not, for the hall was not half large enough to accommodate those who

came, consequently Mr. Ward will tell it over again at the

Metropolitan Theatre next Tuesday evening. The subject will again

be 'The Babes in the Wood.'"

Having travelled over the Union with "The Babes in the Wood"

lecture, and left his audiences everywhere fully "in the wood" as

regarded the subject announced in the title, Artemus Ward became

desirous of going over the same ground again. There were not

wanting dreary and timid prophets who told him that having "sold"

his audiences once, he would not succeed in gaining large houses a

second time. But the faith of Artemus in the unsuspecting nature of

the public was very large, so with fearless intrepidity he conceived

the happy thought of inventing a new title, but keeping to the same

old lecture, interspersing it here and there with a few fresh jokes,

incidental to new topics of the times. Just at this period General

McClellan was advancing on Richmond, and the celebrated fight at

Bull's Run had become matter of history. The forcible abolition of

slavery had obtained a place among the debates of the day, Hinton

Rowan Helper's book on "The Inevitable Crisis" had been sold at

every bookstall, and the future of the negro had risen into the

position of being the great point of discussion throughout the land.

Artemus required a very slender thread to string his jokes upon, and

what better one could be found than that which he chose? He

advertised the title of his next lecture as "Sixty Minutes in

Africa." I need scarcely say that he had never been in Africa, and

in all probability had never read a book on African travel. He knew

nothing about it, and that was the very reason he should choose

Africa for his subject. I believe that he carried out the joke so

far as to have a map made of the African continent, and that on a

few occasions, but not on all, he had it suspended in the

lecture-room. It was in Philadelphia and at the Musical Fund Hall

in Locust Street that I first heard him deliver what he jocularly

phrased to me as "My African Revelation." The hall was very

thronged, the audience must have exceeded two thousand in number,

and the evening was unusually warm. Artemus came on the rostrum

with a roll of paper in his hands, and used it to play with

throughout the lecture, just as recently at the Egyptian Hall, while

lecturing on the Mormons, he invariably made use of a lady's riding-

whip for the same purpose. He commenced his lecture thus, speaking

very gravely and with long pauses between his sentences, allowing

his audience to laugh if they pleased, but seeming to utterly

disregard their laughter:

"I have invited you to listen to a discourse upon Africa. Africa is

my subject. It is a very large subject. It has the Atlantic Ocean

on its left side, the Indian Ocean on its right, and more water than

you could measure out at its smaller end.

Africa produces blacks--ivory blacks--they get ivory. It also

produces deserts, and that is the reason it is so much deserted by

travellers. Africa is famed for its roses. It has the red rose,

the white rose, and the neg-rose. Apropos of negroes, let me tell

you a little story."

Then he at once diverged from the subject of Africa to retail to his

audience his amusing story of the Conversion of a Negro, which he

subsequently worked up into an article in the Savage Club Papers,

and entitled "Converting the Nigger." Never once again in the

course of the lecture did he refer to Africa, until the time having

arrived for him to conclude, and the people being fairly worn out

with laughter, he finished up by saying, "Africa, ladies and

gentlemen, is my subject. You wish me to tell you something about

Africa. Africa is on the map--it is on all the maps of Africa that

I have ever seen. You may buy a good map for a dollar, and if you

study it well, you will know more about Africa than I do. It is a

comprehensive subject, too vast, I assure you, for me to enter upon

to-night. You would not wish me to, I feel that--I feel it deeply,

and I am very sensitive. If you go home and go to bed it will be

better for you than to go with me to Africa."

The joke about the "neg-rose" has since run the gauntlet of nearly

all the minstrel bands throughout England and America. All the

"bones," every "middle-man," and all "end-men" of the burnt-cork

profession have used Artemus Ward as a mine wherein to dig for the

ore which provokes laughter. He has been the "cause of wit in

others," and the bread-winner for many dozens of black-face

songsters--"singists" as he used to term them. He was just as fond

of visiting their entertainments as they were of appropriating his

jokes; and among his best friends in New York were the brothers

Messrs Neil and Dan Bryant, who have made a fortune by what has been

facetiously termed "the burnt-cork opera."

It was in his "Sixty Minutes in Africa" lecture that Artemus Ward

first introduced his celebrated satire on the negro, which he

subsequently put into print. "The African," said he, "may be our

brother. Several highly respectable gentlemen and some talented

females tell me that he is, and for argument's sake I might be

induced to grant it, though I don't believe it myself. But the

African isn't our sister, and wife, and uncle. He isn't several of

our brothers and first wife's relations. He isn't our grandfather

and great grandfather, and our aunt in the country. Scarcely."

It may easily be imagined how popular this joke became when it is

remembered that it was first perpetrated at a time when the negro

question was so much debated as to have become an absolute nuisance.

Nothing else was talked of; nobody would talk of anything but the

negro. The saying arose that all Americans had "nigger-on

the-brain." The topic had become nauseous, especially to the

Democratic party; and Artemus always had more friends among them

than among the Republicans. If he had any politics at all he was

certainly a Democrat.

War had arisen, the South was closed, and the lecturing arena

considerably lessened. Artemus Ward determined to go to California.

Before starting for that side of the American continent, he wished

to appear in the city of New York. He engaged, through his friend

Mr. De Walden, the large hall then known as Niblo's, in front of the

Niblo's Garden Theatre, and now used, I believe, as the dining-room

of the Metropolitan Hotel. At that period Pepper's Ghost chanced to

be the great novelty of New York City, and Artemus Ward was casting

about for a novel title to his old lecture. Whether he or Mr. De

Walden selected that of "Artemus Ward's Struggle with a Ghost" I do

not know; but I think that it was Mr. De Walden's choice. The title

was seasonable, and the lecture successful. Then came the tour to

California, whither I proceeded in advance to warn the miners on the

Yuba, the travellers on the Rio Sacramento, and the citizens of the

Chrysopolis of the Pacific that "A. Ward" would be there shortly.

In California the lecture was advertised under its old name of "The

Babes in the Wood." Platt's Hall was selected for the scene of

operation, and, so popular was the lecturer, that on the first night

we took at the doors more than sixteen hundred dollars in gold. The

crowd proved too great to take money in the ordinary manner, and

hats were used for people to throw their dollars in. One hat broke

through at the crown. I doubt if we ever knew to a dollar how many

dollars it once contained.

California was duly travelled over, and "The Babes in the Wood"

listened to with laughter in its flourishing cities, its

mining-camps among the mountains, and its "new placers beside

gold-bedded rivers. While journeying through that strangely-

beautiful land, the serious question arose--What was to be done

next? After California--where?

Before leaving New York, it had been a favourite scheme of Artemus

Ward not to return from California to the East by way of Panama, but

to come home across the Plains, and to visit Salt Lake City by the

way. The difficulty that now presented itself was, that winter was

close upon us, and that it was no pleasant thing to cross the Sierra

Nevada and scale the Rocky Mountains with the thermometer far below

freezingpoint. Nor was poor Artemus even at that time a strong man.

My advice was to return to Panama, visit the West India Islands, and

come back to California in the spring, lecture again in San

Francisco, and then go on to the land of the Mormons. Artemus

doubted the feasibility of this plan, and the decision was

ultimately arrived at to try the journey to Salt Lake.

Unfortunately the winter turned out to be one of the severest. When

we arrived at Salt Lake City, my poor friend was seized with typhoid

fever, resulting from the fatigue we had undergone, the intense cold

to which we had been subjected, and the excitement of being on a

journey of 3500 miles across the North American Continent, when the

Pacific Railway had made little progress and the Indians were

reported not to be very friendly.

The story of the trip is told in Artemus Ward's lecture. I have

added to it, at the special request of the publisher, a few

explanatory notes, the purport of which is to render the reader

acquainted with the characteristics of the lecturer's delivery. For

the benefit of those who never had an opportunity of seeing Artemus

Ward nor of hearing him lecture, I may be pardoned for attempting to

describe the man himself.

In stature he was tall, in figure, slender. At any time during our

acquaintance his height must have been disproportionate to his

weight. Like his brother Cyrus, who died a few years before him;

Charles F. Browne, our "Artemus Ward," had the premonitory signs of

a short life strongly evident in his early manhood. There were the

lank form, the long pale fingers, the very white pearly teeth, the

thin, fine, soft hair, the undue brightness of the eyes, the

excitable and even irritable disposition, the capricious appetite,

and the alternately jubilant and despondent tone of mind which too

frequently indicate that "the abhorred fury with the shears" is

waiting too near at hand to "slit the thin-spun life." His hair was

very light-colored, and not naturally curly. He used to joke in his

lecture about what it cost him to keep it curled; he wore a very

large moustache without any beard or whiskers; his nose was

exceedingly prominent, having an outline not unlike that of the late

Sir Charles Napier. His forehead was large, with, to use the

language of the phrenologists, the organs of the perceptive

faculties far more developed than those of the imaginative powers.

He had the manner and bearing of a naturally-born gentleman. Great

was the disappointment of many who, having read his humorous papers

descriptive of his exhibition of snakes and waxwork, and who having

also formed their ideas of him from the absurd pictures which had

been attached to some editions of his works, found on meeting with

him that there was no trace of the showman in his deportment, and

little to call up to their mind the smart Yankee who had married

"Betsy Jane." There was nothing to indicate that he had not lived a

long time in Europe and acquired the polish which men gain by coming

in contact with the society of European capitals. In his

conversation there was no marked peculiarity of accent to identify

him as an American, nor any of the braggadocio which some of his

countrymen unadvisedly assume. His voice was soft, gentle, and

clear. He could make himself audible in the largest lecture-rooms

without effort. His style of lecturing was peculiar; so thoroughly

sui generis, that I know of no one with whom to compare him, nor can

any description very well convey an idea of that which it was like.

However much he caused his audience to laugh, no smile appeared upon

his own face. It was grave, even to solemnity, while he was giving

utterance to the most delicious absurdities. His assumption of

indifference to that which he was saying, his happy manner of

letting his best jokes fall from his lips as if unconscious of their

being jokes at all, his thorough self-possession on the platform,

and keen appreciation of that which suited his audience and that

which did not, rendered him well qualified for the task which he had

undertaken--that of amusing the public with a humorous lecture. He

understood and comprehended to a hair's breadth the grand secret of

how not to bore. He had weighed, measured, and calculated to a

nicety the number of laughs an audience could indulge in on one

evening, without feeling that they were laughing just a little too

much. Above all, he was no common man, and did not cause his

audience to feel that they were laughing at that which they should

feel ashamed of being amused with. He was intellectually up to the

level of nine-tenths of those who listened to him, and in listening,

they felt that it was no fool who wore the cap and bells so

excellently. It was amusing to notice how with different people his

jokes produced a different effect. The Honourable Robert Lowe

attended one evening at the Mormon Lecture, and laughed as

hilariously as any one in the room. The next evening Mr. John

Bright happened to be present. With the exception of one or two

occasional smiles, he listened with grave attention.

In placing the lecture before the public in print, it is impossible,

by having recourse to any system of punctuation, to indicate the

pauses, jerky emphases, and odd inflexions of voice which

characterised the delivery. The reporter of the Standard newspaper,

describing his first lecture in London, aptly said: "Artemus dropped

his jokes faster than the meteors of last night succeeded each other

in the sky. And there was this resemblance between the flashes of

his humour and the flights of the meteors, that in each case one

looked for jokes or meteors, but they always came just in the place

that one least expected to find them. Half the enjoyment of the

evening lay, to some of those present, in listening to the hearty

cachinnation of the people who only found out the jokes some two or

three minutes after they were made, and who then laughed apparently

at some grave statements of fact. Reduced to paper, the showman's

jokes are certainly not brilliant; almost their whole effect lies in

their seemingly impromptu character. They are carefully led up to,

of course; but they are uttered as if they are mere afterthoughts,

of which the speaker is hardly sure." Herein the writer in the

Standard hits the most marked peculiarity of Artemus Ward's style of

lecturing. His affectation of not knowing what he was uttering, his

seeming fits of abstraction, and his grave, melancholy aspect,

constituted the very cream of the entertainment. Occasionally he

would amuse himself in an apparently meditative mood, by twirling

his little riding-whip, or by gazing earnestly, but with affected

admiration, at his panorama. At the Egyptian Hall his health

entirely failed him, and he would occasionally have to use a seat

during the course of the lecture. In the notes which follow I have

tried, I know how inefficiently, to convey here and there an idea of

how Artemus rendered his lecture amusing by gesture or action. I

have also, at the request of the publisher, made a few explanatory

comments on the subject of our Mormon trip. In so doing I hope that

I have not thrust myself too prominently forward, nor been too

officious in my explanations. My aim has been to add to the

interest of the lecture with those who never heard it delivered, and

to revive in the memory of those who did some of its notable

peculiarities. The illustrations are from photographs of the

panorama painted in America for Artemus, as the pictorial portion of

his entertainment.

In the lecture is the fun of the journey. For the hard facts the

reader in quest of information is referred to a book published

previously to the lecturer's appearance at the Egyptian Hall, the

title of which is, "Artemus Ward: His Travels among the Mormons."

Much against the grain as it was for Artemus to be statistical, he

has therein detailed some of the experiences of his Mormon trip,

with due regard to the exactitude and accuracy of statement expected

by information-seeking readers in a book of travels. He was not

precisely the sort of traveller to write a paper for the evening

meetings of the Royal Geographical Society, nor was he sufficiently

interested in philosophical theories to speculate on the

developments of Mormonism as illustrative of the history of

religious belief. We were looking out of the window of the Salt

Lake House one morning, when Brigham Young happened to pass down the

opposite side of Main Street. It was cold weather, and the prophet

was clothed in a thick cloak of some green-colored material. I

remarked to Artemus that Brigham had seemingly compounded Mormonism

from portions of a dozen different creeds; and that in selecting

green for the color of his apparel, he was imitating Mahomet. "Has

it not struck you," I observed, "that Swedenborgianism and

Mahometanism are oddly blended in the Mormon faith?"

"Petticoatism and plunder," was Artemus's reply--and that

comprehended his whole philosophy of Mormonism. As he remarked

elsewhere: "Brigham Young is a man of great natural ability. If you

ask me, How pious is he? I treat it as a conundrum, and give it up."

To lecture in London, and at the Egyptian Hall, had long been a

favourite idea of Artemus Ward. Some humorist has said, that "All

good Americans, when they die--, go to Paris." So do most, whether

good or bad, while they are living.

Still more strongly developed is the transatlantic desire to go to

Rome. In the far west of the Missouri, in the remoter west of

Colorado and away in far north-western Oregon, I have heard many a

tradesman express his intention to make dollars enough to enable him

to visit Rome. In a land where all is so new, where they have had

no past, where an old wall would be a sensation, and a tombstone of

anybody's great grandfather the marvel of the whole region, the

charms of the old world have an irresistible fascination. To visit

the home of the Caesars they have read of in their school-books, and

to look at architecture which they have seen pictorially, but have

nothing like it in existence around them, is very naturally the

strong wish of people who are nationally nomadic, and who have all

more or less a smattering of education. Artemus Ward never

expressed to me any very great wish to travel on the European

continent, but to see London was to accomplish something which he

had dreamed of from his boyhood. There runs from Marysville in

California to Oroville in the same State a short and singular little

railway, which, when we were there, was in a most unfinished

condition. To Oroville we were going. We were too early for the

train at the Marysville station, and sat down on a pile of timber to

chat over future prospects.

"What sort of a man was Albert Smith?" asked Artemus "And do you

think that the Mormons would be as good a subject for the Londoners

as Mont Blanc was?"

I answered his questions. He reflected for a few moments, and then

said:

"Well, old fellow, I'll tell you what I should like to do. I should

like to go to London and give my lecture in the same place. Can it

be done?"

It was done. Not in the same room, but under the same roof and on

the same floor; in that gloomy-looking Hall in Piccadilly, which was

destined to be the ante-chamber to the tomb of both lecturers.

Throughout this brief sketch I have written familiarly of the late

Mr. Charles F. Browne as "Artemus Ward," or simply as "Artemus." I

have done so advisedly, mainly because, during the whole course of

our acquaintance, I do not remember addressing him as "Mr. Browne,"

or by his real Christian name. To me he was always "Artemus"--

Artemus the kind, the gentle, the suave, the generous. One who was

ever a friend in the fullest meaning of the word, and the best of

companions in the amplest acceptance of the phrase. His merry laugh

and pleasant conversation are as audible to me as if they were heard

but yesterday; his words of kindness linger on the ear of memory,

and his tones of genial mirth live in echoes which I shall listen to

for evermore. Two years will soon have passed away since last he

spoke, and

"Silence now, enamour'd of his voice

Looks its mute music in her rugged cell."

E.P. HINGSTON.

LONDON, October 1868.

* * *

ARTEMUS WARD.

PART I.

ESSAYS, SKETCHES, AND LETTERS.

1.1. ONE OF MR. WARD'S BUSINESS LETTERS.

To the Editor of the --

Sir--I'm movin along--slowly along--down tords your place. I

want you should rite me a letter, sayin how is the show bizniss

in your place. My show at present consists of three moral Bares,

a Kangaroo (a amoozin little Raskal--t'would make you larf

yerself to deth to see the little cuss jump up and squeal) wax

figgers of G. Washington Gen. Tayler John Bunyan Capt Kidd and

Dr. Webster in the act of killin Dr. Parkman, besides several

miscellanyus moral wax statoots of celebrated piruts & murderers,

&c., ekalled by few & exceld by none. Now Mr. Editor, scratch

orf a few lines sayin how is the show bizniss down to your place.

I shall hav my hanbills dun at your offiss. Depend upon it. I

want you should git my hanbills up in flamin stile. Also git up

a tremenjus excitemunt in yr. paper 'bowt my onparaleld Show. We

must fetch the public sumhow. We must wurk on their feelins.

Cum the moral on 'em strong. If it's a temperance community tell

'em I sined the pledge fifteen minits arter Ise born, but on the

contery ef your peple take their tods, say Mister Ward is as

Jenial a feller as we ever met, full of conwiviality, & the life

an sole of the Soshul Bored. Take, don't you? If you say anythin

abowt my show say my snaiks is as harmliss as the new-born Babe.

What a interestin study it is to see a zewological animil like a

snaik under perfeck subjecshun! My kangaroo is the most larfable

little cuss I ever saw. All for 15 cents. I am anxyus to skewer

your infloounce. I repeet in regard to them hanbills that I shall

git 'em struck orf up to your printin office. My perlitercal

sentiments agree with yourn exackly. I know thay do, becawz I

never saw a man whoos didn't.

Respectively yures,

A. Ward.

P.S.--You scratch my back & Ile scratch your back.

1.2. ON "FORTS."

Every man has got a Fort. It's sum men's fort to do one thing,

and some other men's fort to do another, while there is numeris

shiftliss critters goin round loose whose fort is not to do

nothin.

Shakspeer rote good plase, but he wouldn't hav succeeded as a

Washington correspondent of a New York daily paper. He lackt the

rekesit fancy and imagginashun.

That's so!

Old George Washington's Fort was not to hev eny public man of the

present day resemble him to eny alarmin extent. Whare bowts can

George's ekal be found? I ask, & boldly anser no whares, or eny

whare else.

Old man Townsin's Fort was to maik Sassyperiller. "Goy to the

world! anuther life saived!" (Cotashun from Townsin's

advertisemunt.)

Cyrus Field's Fort is to lay a sub-machine tellegraf under the

boundin billers of the Oshun, and then hev it Bust.

Spaldin's Fort is to maik Prepared Gloo, which mends everything.

Wonder ef it will mend a sinner's wickid waze? (Impromptoo

goak.)

Zoary's Fort is to be a femaile circus feller.

My Fort is the grate moral show bizniss & ritin choice famerly

literatoor for the noospapers. That's what's the matter with ME.

&c., &c., &c. So I mite go on to a indefnit extent.

Twict I've endeverd to do things which thay wasn't my Fort. The

fust time was when I undertuk to lick a owdashus cuss who cut a

hole in my tent & krawld threw. Sez I, "my jentle Sir go out or

I shall fall onto you putty hevy." Sez he, "Wade in, Old wax

figgers," whareupon I went for him, but he cawt me powerful on

the hed & knockt me threw the tent into a cow pastur. He pursood

the attack & flung me into a mud puddle. As I aroze & rung out

my drencht garmints I koncluded fitin wasn't my Fort. Ile now

rize the kurtin upon Seen 2nd: It is rarely seldum that I seek

consolation in the Flowin Bole. But in a sertin town in Injianny

in the Faul of 18--, my orgin grinder got sick with the fever &

died. I never felt so ashamed in my life, & I thowt I'd hist in

a few swallows of suthin strengthin. Konsequents was I histid in

so much I dident zackly know whare bowts I was. I turnd my livin

wild beests of Pray loose into the streets and spilt all my wax

wurks. I then Bet I cood play hoss. So I hitched myself to a

Kanawl bote, there bein two other hosses hitcht on also, one

behind and anuther ahead of me. The driver hollerd for us to git

up, and we did. But the hosses bein onused to sich a arrangemunt

begun to kick & squeal and rair up. Konsequents was I was kickt

vilently in the stummuck & back, and presuntly I fownd myself in

the Kanawl with the other hosses, kickin & yellin like a tribe of

Cusscaroorus savvijis. I was rescood, & as I was bein carrid to

the tavern on a hemlock Bored I sed in a feeble voise, "Boys,

playin hoss isn't my Fort."

MORUL--Never don't do nothin which isn't your Fort, for ef you do

you'll find yourself splashin round in the Kanawl, figgeratively

speakin.

1.3. THE SHAKERS.

The Shakers is the strangest religious sex I ever met. I'd hearn

tell of 'em and I'd seen 'em, with their broad brim'd hats and

long wastid coats; but I'd never cum into immejit contack with

'em, and I'd sot 'em down as lackin intelleck, as I'd never seen

'em to my Show--leastways, if they cum they was disgised in white

peple's close, so I didn't know 'em.

But in the Spring of 18--, I got swampt in the exterior of New

York State, one dark and stormy night, when the winds Blue

pityusly, and I was forced to tie up with the Shakers.

I was toilin threw the mud, when in the dim vister of the futer I

obsarved the gleams of a taller candle. Tiein a hornet's nest to

my off hoss's tail to kinder encourage him, I soon reached the

place. I knockt at the door, which it was opened unto me by a

tall, slick-faced, solum lookin individooal, who turn'd out to be

a Elder.

"Mr. Shaker," sed I, "you see before you a Babe in the woods, so

to speak, and he axes shelter of you."

"Yay," sed the Shaker, and he led the way into the house, another

Shaker bein sent to put my hosses and waggin under kiver.

A solum female, lookin sumwhat like a last year's beanpole stuck

into a long meal bag, cum in axed me was I athurst and did I

hunger? to which I urbanely anserd "a few." She went orf and I

endeverd to open a conversashun with the old man.

"Elder, I spect?" sed I.

"Yay," he said.

"Helth's good, I reckon?"

"Yay."

"What's the wages of a Elder, when he understans his bizness--or

do you devote your sarvices gratooitus?"

"Yay."

"Stormy night, sir."

"Yay."

"If the storm continners there'll be a mess underfoot, hay?"

"Yay."

"It's onpleasant when there's a mess underfoot?"

"Yay."

"If I may be so bold, kind sir, what's the price of that pecooler

kind of weskit you wear, incloodin trimmins?"

"Yay!"

I pawsd a minit, and then, thinkin I'd be faseshus with him and

see how that would go, I slapt him on the shoulder, bust into a

harty larf, and told him that as a yayer he had no livin ekal.

He jumpt up as if Bilin water had bin squirted into his ears,

groaned, rolled his eyes up tords the sealin and sed: "You're a

man of sin!" He then walkt out of the room.

Jest then the female in the meal bag stuck her hed into the room

and statid that refreshments awaited the weary travler, and I sed

if it was vittles she ment the weary travler was agreeable, and I

follored her into the next room.

I sot down to the table and the female in the meal bag pored out

sum tea. She sed nothin, and for five minutes the only live

thing in that room was a old wooden clock, which tickt in a

subdood and bashful manner in the corner. This dethly stillness

made me oneasy, and I determined to talk to the female or bust.

So sez I, "marrige is agin your rules, I bleeve, marm?"

"Yay."

"The sexes liv strickly apart, I spect?"

"Yay."

"It's kinder singler," sez I, puttin on my most sweetest look and

speakin in a winnin voice, "that so fair a made as thow never got

hitched to some likely feller." [N.B.--She was upards of 40 and

homely as a stump fence, but I thawt I'd tickil her.]

"I don't like men!" she sed, very short.

"Wall, I dunno," sez I, "they're a rayther important part of the

populashun. I don't scacely see how we could git along without

'em."

"Us poor wimin folks would git along a grate deal better if there

was no men!"

"You'll excoos me, marm, but I don't think that air would work.

It wouldn't be regler."

"I'm fraid of men!" she sed.

"That's onnecessary, marm. YOU ain't in no danger. Don't fret

yourself on that pint."

"Here we're shot out from the sinful world. Here all is peas.

Here we air brothers and sisters. We don't marry and consekently

we hav no domestic difficulties. Husbans don't abooze their

wives--wives don't worrit their husbans. There's no children

here to worrit us. Nothin to worrit us here. No wicked

matrimony here. Would thow like to be a Shaker?"

"No," sez I, "it ain't my stile."

I had now histed in as big a load of pervishuns as I could carry

comfortable, and, leanin back in my cheer, commenst pickin my

teeth with a fork. The female went out, leavin me all alone with

the clock. I hadn't sot thar long before the Elder poked his hed

in at the door. "You're a man of sin!" he sed, and groaned and

went away.

Direckly thar cum in two young Shakeresses, as putty and slick

lookin gals as I ever met. It is troo they was drest in meal

bags like the old one I'd met previsly, and their shiny, silky

har was hid from sight by long white caps, sich as I spose female

Josts wear; but their eyes sparkled like diminds, their cheeks

was like roses, and they was charmin enuff to make a man throw

stuns at his granmother if they axed him to. They comenst

clearin away the dishes, castin shy glances at me all the time.

I got excited. I forgot Betsy Jane in my rapter, and sez I, "my

pretty dears, how air you?"

"We air well," they solumly sed.

"Whar's the old man?" sed I, in a soft voice.

"Of whom dost thow speak--Brother Uriah?"

"I mean the gay and festiv cuss who calls me a man of sin.

Shouldn't wonder if his name was Uriah."

"He has retired."

"Wall, my pretty dears," sez I, "let's have sum fun. Let's play

puss in the corner. What say?"

"Air you a Shaker, sir?" they axed.

"Wall my pretty dears, I haven't arrayed my proud form in a long

weskit yit, but if they was all like you perhaps I'd jine 'em.

As it is, I'm a Shaker pro-temporary."

They was full of fun. I seed that at fust, only they was a

leetle skeery. I tawt 'em Puss in the corner and sich like plase,

and we had a nice time, keepin quiet of course so the old man

shouldn't hear. When we broke up, sez I, "my pretty dears, ear I

go you hav no objections, hav you, to a innersent kiss at

partin?"

"Yay," they said, and I YAY'D.

I went up stairs to bed. I spose I'd bin snoozin half an hour

when I was woke up by a noise at the door. I sot up in bed,

leanin on my elbers and rubbin my eyes, and I saw the follerin

picter: The Elder stood in the doorway, with a taller candle in

his hand. He hadn't no wearin appeerel on except his night

close, which flutterd in the breeze like a Seseshun flag. He sed,

"You're a man of sin!" then groaned and went away.

I went to sleep agin, and drempt of runnin orf with the pretty

little Shakeresses mounted on my Californy Bar. I thawt the Bar

insisted on steerin strate for my dooryard in Baldinsville and

that Betsy Jane cum out and giv us a warm recepshun with a

panfull of Bilin water. I was woke up arly by the Elder. He

said refreshments was reddy for me down stairs. Then sayin I was

a man of sin, he went groanin away.

As I was goin threw the entry to the room where the vittles was,

I cum across the Elder and the old female I'd met the night

before, and what d'ye spose they was up to? Huggin and kissin

like young lovers in their gushingist state. Sez I, "my Shaker

friends, I reckon you'd better suspend the rules and git

married."

"You must excoos Brother Uriah," sed the female; "he's subjeck to

fits and hain't got no command over hisself when he's into 'em."

"Sartinly," sez I, "I've bin took that way myself frequent."

"You're a man of sin!" sed the Elder.

Arter breakfust my little Shaker frends cum in agin to clear away

the dishes.

"My pretty dears," sez I, "shall we YAY agin?"

"Nay," they sed, and I NAY'D.

The Shakers axed me to go to their meetin, as they was to hav

sarvices that mornin, so I put on a clean biled rag and went.

The meetin house was as neat as a pin. The floor was white as

chalk and smooth as glass. The Shakers was all on hand, in clean

weskits and meal bags, ranged on the floor like milingtery

companies, the mails on one side of the room and the females on

tother. They commenst clappin their hands and singin and dancin.

They danced kinder slow at fust, but as they got warmed up they

shaved it down very brisk, I tell you. Elder Uriah, in

particler, exhiberted a right smart chance of spryness in his

legs, considerin his time of life, and as he cum a dubble shuffle

near where I sot, I rewarded him with a approvin smile and sed:

"Hunky boy! Go it, my gay and festiv cuss!"

"You're a man of sin!" he sed, continnerin his shuffle.

The Sperret, as they called it, then moved a short fat Shaker to

say a few remarks. He sed they was Shakers and all was ekal.

They was the purest and Seleckest peple on the yearth. Other

peple was sinful as they could be, but Shakers was all right.

Shakers was all goin kerslap to the Promist Land, and nobody want

goin to stand at the gate to bar 'em out, if they did they'd git

run over.

The Shakers then danced and sung agin, and arter they was threw,

one of 'em axed me what I thawt of it.

Sez I, "What duz it siggerfy?"

"What?" sez he.

"Why this jumpin up and singin? This long weskit bizniss, and

this anty-matrimony idee? My frends, you air neat and tidy.

Your lands is flowin with milk and honey. Your brooms is fine,

and your apple sass is honest. When a man buys a keg of apple

sass of you he don't find a grate many shavins under a few layers

of sass--a little Game I'm sorry to say sum of my New Englan

ancesters used to practiss. Your garding seeds is fine, and if I

should sow 'em on the rock of Gibralter probly I should raise a

good mess of garding sass. You air honest in your dealins. You

air quiet and don't distarb nobody. For all this I givs you

credit. But your religion is small pertaters, I must say. You

mope away your lives here in single retchidness, and as you air

all by yourselves nothing ever conflicks with your pecooler

idees, except when Human Nater busts out among you, as I

understan she sumtimes do. [I giv Uriah a sly wink here, which

made the old feller squirm like a speared Eel.] You wear long

weskits and long faces, and lead a gloomy life indeed. No

children's prattle is ever hearn around your harthstuns--you air

in a dreary fog all the time, and you treat the jolly sunshine of

life as tho' it was a thief, drivin it from your doors by them

weskits, and meal bags, and pecooler noshuns of yourn. The gals

among you, sum of which air as slick pieces of caliker as I ever

sot eyes on, air syin to place their heds agin weskits which

kiver honest, manly harts, while you old heds fool yerselves with

the idee that they air fulfillin their mishun here, and air

contented. Here you air all pend up by yerselves, talkin about

the sins of a world you don't know nothin of. Meanwhile said

world continners to resolve round on her own axletree onct in

every 24 hours, subjeck to the Constitution of the United States,

and is a very plesant place of residence. It's a unnatral,

onreasonable and dismal life you're leadin here. So it strikes

me. My Shaker frends, I now bid you a welcome adoo. You hav

treated me exceedin well. Thank you kindly, one and all.

"A base exhibiter of depraved monkeys and onprincipled wax

works!" sed Uriah.

"Hello, Uriah," sez I, "I'd most forgot you. Wall, look out for

them fits of yourn, and don't catch cold and die in the flour of

your youth and beauty."

And I resoomed my jerney.

1.4. HIGH-HANDED OUTRAGE AT UTICA.

In the Faul of 1856, I showed my show in Uticky, a trooly grate

sitty in the State of New York.

The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was loud in

her prases.

1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks in my

usual flowry stile what was my skorn disgust to see a big burly

feller walk up to the cage containin my wax figgers of the Lord's

Last Supper, and cease Judas Iscarrot by the feet and drag him

out on the ground. He then commenced fur to pound him as hard as

he cood.

"What under the son are you abowt?" cried I.

Sez he, "What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here fur?"

and he hit the wax figger another tremenjis blow on the hed.

Sez I, "You egrejus ass, that air's a wax figger--a

representashun of the false 'Postle."

Sez he, "That's all very well fur you to say, but I tell you, old

man, that Judas Iscarrot can't show hisself in Utiky with

impunerty by a darn site!" with which observashun he kaved in

Judassis hed. The young man belonged to 1 of the first famerlies

in Utiky. I sood him, and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson

in the 3d degree.

1.5. CELEBRATION AT BALDINSVILLE IN HONOR OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE.

Baldinsville, Injianny, Sep. the onct, 18&58.--I was summund home

from Cinsinnaty quite suddin by a lettur from the Supervizers of

Baldinsville, sayin as how grate things was on the Tappis in that

air town in refferunse to sellebratin the compleshun of the

Sub-Mershine Tellergraph & axkin me to be Pressunt. Lockin up my

Kangeroo and wax wurks in a sekure stile I took my departer for

Baldinsville--"my own, my nativ lan," which I gut intwo at early

kandle litin on the follerin night & just as the sellerbrashun

and illumernashun ware commensin.

Baldinsville was trooly in a blaze of glory. Near can I forgit

the surblime speckticul which met my gase as I alited from the

Staige with my umbreller and verlis. The Tarvern was lit up with

taller kandles all over & a grate bon fire was burnin in frunt

thareof. A Traspirancy was tied onto the sine post with the

follerin wurds--"Giv us Liberty or Deth." Old Tompkinsis grosery

was illumernated with 5 tin lantuns and the follerin Transpirancy

was in the winder--"The Sub-Mershine Tellergraph & the

Baldinsville and Stonefield Plank Road--the 2 grate eventz of the

19th centerry--may intestines strife never mar their grandjure."

Simpkinsis shoe shop was all ablase with kandles and lantuns. A

American Eagle was painted onto a flag in a winder--also these

wurds, viz.--"The Constitooshun must be Presarved." The Skool

house was lited up in grate stile and the winders was filld with

mottoes amung which I notised the follerin--"Trooth smashed to

erth shall rize agin--YOU CAN'T STOP HER." "The Boy stood on the

Burnin Deck whense awl but him had Fled." "Prokrastinashun is

the theaf of Time." "Be virtoous & you will be Happy."

"Intemperunse has cawsed a heap of trubble--shun the Bole," an

the follerin sentimunt written by the skool master, who graduated

at Hudson Kollige: "Baldinsville sends greetin to Her Magisty

the Queen, & hopes all hard feelins which has heretofore previs

bin felt between the Supervizers of Baldinsville and the British

Parlimunt, if such there has been, may now be forever wiped frum

our Escutchuns. Baldinsville this night rejoises over the

gerlorious event which sementz 2 grate nashuns onto one anuther

by means of a elecktric wire under the roarin billers of the

Nasty Deep. QUOSQUE TANTRUM, A BUTTER, CATERLINY, PATENT

NOSTRUM!" Squire Smith's house was lited up regardlis of

expense. His little sun William Henry stood upon the roof firin

orf crackers. The old 'Squire hisself was dressed up in soljer

clothes and stood on his door-step, pintin his sword sollumly to

a American flag which was suspendid on top of a pole in frunt of

his house. Frequiently he wood take orf his cocked hat & wave it

round in a impressive stile. His oldest darter Mis Isabeller

Smith, who has just cum home from the Perkinsville Female

Instertoot, appeared at the frunt winder in the West room as the

goddis of liberty, & sung "I see them on their windin way."

Booteus 1, sed I to myself, you air a angil & nothin shorter. N.

Boneparte Smith, the 'Squire's oldest sun, drest hisself up as

Venus the God of Wars and red the Decleration of Inderpendunse

from the left chambir winder. The 'Squire's wife didn't jine in

the festiverties. She sed it was the tarnulest nonsense she ever

seed. Sez she to the 'Squire, "Cum into the house and go to bed

you old fool, you. Tomorrer you'll be goin round half-ded with

the rumertism & won't gin us a minit's peace till you get well."

Sez the 'Squire, "Betsy, you little appresiate the importance of

the event which I this night commererate." Sez she, "Commemerate

a cat's tail--cum into the house this instant, you pesky old

critter." "Betsy," sez the 'Squire, wavin his sword, "retire."

This made her just as mad as she could stick. She retired, but

cum out agin putty quick with a panfull of Bilin hot water which

she throwed all over the Squire, & Surs, you wood have split your

sides larfin to see the old man jump up and holler & run into the

house. Except this unpropishus circumstance all went as merry as

a carriage bell, as Lord Byrun sez. Doctor Hutchinsis offiss was

likewise lited up and a Transpirancy, on which was painted the

Queen in the act of drinkin sum of "Hutchinsis invigorater," was

stuck into one of the winders. The Baldinsville Bugle of Liberty

noospaper offiss was also illumernated, & the follerin mottoes

stuck out--"The Press is the Arkermejian leaver which moves the

world." "Vote Early." "Buckle on your Armer." "Now is the time

to Subscribe." "Franklin, Morse & Field." "Terms 1.50 dollars a

year--liberal reducshuns to clubs." In short the villige of

Baldinsville was in a perfect fewroar. I never seed so many

peple thar befour in my born days. Ile not attemp to describe

the seens of that grate night. Wurds wood fale me ef I shood try

to do it. I shall stop here a few periods and enjoy my "Oatem

cum dig the tates," as our skool master observes, in the buzzum

of my famerly, & shall then resume the show biznis, which Ive bin

into twenty-two (22) yeres and six (6) months.

1.6. AMONG THE SPIRITS.

My naburs is mourn harf crazy on the new-fangled ideas about

Sperrets. Sperretooul Sircles is held nitely & 4 or 5 long hared

fellers has settled here and gone into the Sperret biznis

excloosively. A atemt was made to git Mrs. A. Ward to embark

into the Sperret biznis but the atemt faled. 1 of the long hared

fellers told her she was a ethereal creeter & wood make a sweet

mejium, whareupon she attact him with a mop handle & drove him

out of the house. I will hear obsarve that Mrs.Ward is a

invalerble womum--the partner of my goys & the shairer of my

sorrers. In my absunse she watchis my interests & things with a

Eagle Eye & when I return she welcums me in afectionate stile.

Trooly it is with us as it was with Mr. & Mrs. INGOMER in the

Play, to whit,--

2 soles with but a single thawt

2 harts which beet as 1.

My naburs injooced me to attend a Sperretooul Sircle at Squire

Smith's. When I arrove I found the east room chock full includin

all the old maids in the villige & the long hared fellers a4sed.

When I went in I was salootid with "hear cums the benited man"--

"hear cums the hory-heded unbeleever"--"hear cums the skoffer at

trooth," etsettery, etsettery.

Sez I, "my frens, it's troo I'm hear, & now bring on your

Sperrets."

1 of the long hared fellers riz up and sed he would state a few

remarks. He sed man was a critter of intelleck & was movin on to

a Gole. Sum men had bigger intellecks than other men had and

thay wood git to the Gole the soonerest. Sum men was beests &

wood never git into the Gole at all. He sed the Erth was

materiel but man was immaterial, and hens man was different from

the Erth. The Erth, continnered the speaker, resolves round on

its own axeltree onct in 24 hours, but as man haint gut no

axeltree he cant resolve. He sed the ethereal essunce of the

koordinate branchis of super-human natur becum mettymorfussed as

man progrest in harmonial coexistunce & eventooally anty

humanized theirselves & turned into reglar sperretuellers. (This

was versifferusly applauded by the cumpany, and as I make it a

pint to get along as pleasant as possible, I sung out "bully for

you, old boy.")

The cumpany then drew round the table and the Sircle kommenst

to go it. Thay axed me if thare was an body in the Sperret land

which I wood like to convarse with. I sed if Bill Tompkins, who

was onct my partner in the show biznis, was sober, I should like

to convarse with him a few periods.

"Is the Sperret of William Tompkins present?" sed 1 of the long

hared chaps, and there was three knox on the table.

Sez I, "William, how goze it, Old Sweetness?"

"Pretty ruff, old hoss," he replide.

That was a pleasant way we had of addressin each other when he

was in the flesh.

"Air you in the show bizniz, William?" sed I.

He sed he was. He sed he & John Bunyan was travelin with a

side show in connection with Shakspere, Jonson & Co.'s Circus.

He sed old Bun (meanin Mr. Bunyan,) stired up the animils &

ground the organ while he tended door. Occashunally Mr. Bunyan

sung a comic song. The Circus was doin middlin well. Bill

Shakspeer had made a grate hit with old Bob Ridley, and Ben

Jonson was delitin the peple with his trooly grate ax of

hossmanship without saddul or bridal. Thay was rehersin

Dixey's Land & expected it would knock the peple.

Sez I, "William, my luvly friend, can you pay me that 13

dollars you owe me?" He sed no with one of the most tremenjis

knox I ever experiunsed.

The Sircle sed he had gone. "Air you gone, William?" I axed.

"Rayther," he replide, and I knowd it was no use to pursoo the

subjeck furder.

I then called fur my farther.

"How's things, daddy?"

"Middlin, my son, middlin."

"Ain't you proud of your orfurn boy?"

"Scacely."

"Why not, my parient?"

"Becawz you hav gone to writin for the noospapers, my son.

Bimeby you'll lose all your character for trooth and

verrasserty. When I helpt you into the show biznis I told you

to dignerfy that there profeshun. Litteratoor is low."

He also statid that he was doin middlin well in the peanut

biznis & liked it putty well, tho' the climit was rather warm.

When the Sircle stopt thay axed me what I thawt of it.