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Artemus dropped an unimportant remark or two, and then assumed a look of superhuman earnestness, and made the following astounding speech. He said: "Now there is one thing I ought to ask you about before I forget it.
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!"
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."
One of these vestrymen complained to the doorkeeper, and denounced the lecturer as an impostor "and," said the wealthy parishioner, "as for the panorama, it is the worst painted thing I ever saw." During the lecture Artemus was always as solemn as the grave. Sometimes he would seem to forget his audience, and stand for several seconds gazing intently at his panorama.
On yonder woodshed," sed I, drawin myself up to my full hite and speakin in a show-actin voice, "will I fire a Nashunal saloot!" sayin whitch I tared myself from her grasp and rusht to the top of the shed whare I blazed away until Square Baxter's hired man and my son Artemus Juneyer cum and took me down by mane force.
His public lectures, though not so popular as those of Artemus Ward, won him recognition as a master in all the arts of the platform. Mr. H. R. Haweis, who heard him once at the old Hanover Square Rooms, thus describes the occasion: "The audience was not large nor very enthusiastic. I believe he would have been an increasing success had he stayed longer.
I remember the words with which one of these ladies announced her departure from her bothering home. "Oh, well, I'm tired of trouble," she confided to another lady, "so I've made up my mind not to have any more of it." Artemus Ward tells us of a man who had been in prison for twenty years. Suddenly a bright idea occurred to him; he opened the window and got out.
Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. He would begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently absent-minded pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; and that was the remark intended to explode the mine and it did.
"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.
C. had talent, but he couldn't spel. No man has a right to be a lit'rary man onless he knows how to spel. It is a pity that Chawcer, who had geneyus, was so unedicated. He's the wuss speller I know of. I guess I'm through, and so I lay down the pen, which is more mightier than the sword, but which I'm fraid would stand a rayther slim chance beside the needle gun. Adoo! Adoo! Artemus Ward.
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