The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, part 1 | Page 6

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