Artemus Ward

“ I can't exactly say that I pant to be an agriculturist, but I do know that in the main it is an independent, calmly happy sort of life. I can see how the prosperous farmer can go joyously a-field with the rise of the sun, and how his heart may swell with pride over bounteous harvests and sleek oxen. And it must be rather jolly for him on winter evenings to sit before the bright kitchen fire and watch his rosy boys and girls as they study out the charades in the weekly paper, and gradually find out why my first is something that grows in a garden, and my second is a fish. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A Reporter, we modestly submit, is as good as anybody, and ought to feel that he is, everywhere and at all times. For one, let us quietly and without any show of vanity remark, that we are not only just as good as anybody else, but a great deal better than many we know of. We love God and hate Indians: pay our debts; support the Constitution of the United States; go in for Progress, Sunshine, Calico, and other luxuries; are perfectly satisfied and happy, and wouldn't swop "sits" with the President, Louis Napoleon, the Emperor of China, Sultan of Turkey, Brigham Young, or Nicholas Longworth. ”

“ Many and many a night have I in my childhood laid awake thinking of my homeliness, and as the moonlight has streamed in at the window and fell upon the handsome and placid features of my little brother slumbering at my side, Heaven forgive me for the wicked thought, but I have felt an almost unconquerable impulse to forever disfigure and mar that sweet upturned innocent face that smiled and looked so beautiful in sleep, for it was ever reminding me of the curse I was doomed to carry about me. ”

“ There has been deaths in your family, and there will be more! But Reserve your constitution and you will live to be seventy years of old. Me child, HER hair will be black—black as the Raving's wing. Likewise black will also be her eyes, and she'll be as different from which you air as night and day. ”

“ How many a disheartened speaker, who was conscious the night before of a failure, before a thin, cold, spiritless audience, awakes delighted to learn that he has addressed an overwhelming assemblage of his enthusiastic, appreciating fellow-citizens, to find his speech sparkling with 'cheers,' breaking out into 'immense applause,' and concluding amidst 'the wildest excitement!'"
There is considerable truth in the above, we are sorry to state. Reporters are too apt to smooth over and give a fair face to the stupidity and bombast of political and other public humbugs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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!" ”

“ ABOUT EDITORS. We hear a great deal, and something too much, about the poverty of editors. It is common for editors to parade their poverty and joke about it in their papers. We see these witticisms almost every day of our lives. Sometimes the editor does the "vater vorks business," as Mr. Samuel Weller called weeping, and makes pathetic appeals to his subscribers. Sometimes he is in earnest when he makes these appeals, but why "on airth" does he stick to a business that will not support him decently? ”

“ Standing beside a vegetable cart is a maiden beautiful and sweeter far than any daisy in the fields. Eyes of purest blue, lips of cherry red, teeth like pearls, silken, golden hair, and form of exquisite mould. ”

“ The indefatigable agent hitched his horse and started for the "pastur." After falling into all manner of mudholes, scratching himself with briers, and tumbling over decayed logs, the agent at length found the bereaved man. In a subdued voice he asked the man if he had lost his wife. The man said he had. The agent was very sorry to hear of it, and sympathized with the man deeply in his great affliction; but death, he said, was an insatiate archer, and shot down all, both of high and low degree. ”

“ People rush outdoors bareheaded and barefooted, as it were, and dash blindly into all sorts of dark alleys in quest of all sorts of Trouble, when, "Goodness knows," if they will only sit calmly and pleasantly by their firesides, Trouble will knock soon enough at their doors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a footlight trick to work on your feelings. For ourselves, let us say, that unless we slip up considerably on our calculations, it will be a long time before our fellow-citizens will have the melancholy pleasure of erecting to our memory a towering monument of Parian marble on the Public Square. ”

“ Many and many a night have I got up in my nightdress, and lighting my little lamp, sat for hours gazing at my terrible ugliness of face reflected in the mirror, drawn to it by a cruel fascination which it was impossible for me to resist. ”

“ He is a little shaky in one of his legs, but otherwise he is as active as most men of forty-five, and his general health is excellent. He uses no tobacco, but for the last twenty years he has drunk one glass of liquor every day—no more, no less. He says he must have his tod. I had begun to have lurking suspicions about this Revolutionary soldier business, but here is an original Jacobs. But because a man can drink a glass of liquor a day, and live to be a hundred years old, my young readers must not infer that by drinking two glasses of liquor a day a man can live to be two hundred. ”

“ A Reporter should be independent enough to meet the approaches of gentlemen of the Nincompoop persuasion with a flat rebuff. He should never gloss over a political humbug, whether he belongs to "our side" or not. He is not thanked for doing it, and, furthermore, he loses the respect and confidence of his readers. There are many amiable gentlemen ornamenting the various walks of life, who are under the impression that for a dozen bad cigars or a few drinks of worse whisky they can purchase the "opinion" of almost any Reporter. ”

“ The American Eagle has lived too sumptuously of late—his stummic becum foul, and he's takin a slite emetic. That's all. We're getting ready to strike a big blow and a sure one. When we do strike, the fur will fly and secession will be in the hands of the undertaker, sheeted for so deep a grave that nothin short of Gabriel's trombone will ever awaken it! Mind what I say. You've heard the showman! ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a babel of tongues, an excessively cosmopolitan gathering of people, a roar of wheels, and a lively smell of beef and vegetables. The soap man, the headache curative man, the razor man, and a variety of other tolerable humbugs, are in full blast. We meet married men with baskets in their hands. ”

“ 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! ”

“ We read of patriotic and lofty-minded individuals who sacrifice health, time, money, and perhaps life, for the good of humanity, the Union, and that sort of thing, but we don't SEE them very often. We must say that we could count up all the lofty patriots in this line that we have ever seen, during our brief but chequered and romantic career, in less than half a day. ”

“ To those persons who can't live by printing papers we would say, in the language of the profligate boarder when dunned for his bill, being told at the same time by the keeper of the house that he couldn't board people for nothing, "Then sell out to somebody who can!" In other words, fly from a business which don't remunerate. But as we intimated before, there is much gammon in the popular editorial cry of poverty.
Just now we see a touching paragraph floating through the papers to the effect that editors don't live out half their years ”

“ The colored man of the name of Jeffries came to town and drove to the Johnson Street Station where he encountered a frail young woman of the name of Jenkins, who had just been released from jail, where she had been confined for naughtical conduct (drugging and robbing a sailor) . "Will you fly with me, adorable Jenkins?" he unto her did say, "or words to that effect," and unto him in reply she did up and say: "My African brother, I will. Spirit," she continued, alluding to a stone jug under the seat in the wagon, "I follow!" ”

“ 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." ”

“ We are not a horse, and consequently have never been called upon to furnish the motive power for a threshing-machine; but we fancy that the life of the Editor who is forced to write, write, write, whether he feels right or not, is much like that of the steed in question. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 ”