Chapter 15

'The reason why he couldn't gain her,Was becoz he's drunken saler!'

"That's very good, indeed," said the Secky, "but this is hardly the place to sing songs in, my frend."

"Let me write the songs of a nashun," sed I, "and I don't care a cuss who goes to the legislater! But I ax your pardon—how's things?"

"Comfortable, I thank you. I have here," he added, "a copy of the Middletown "Weekly Clarion" of February the 15, containin a report that there isn't much Union sentiment in South Caroliny, but I hardly credit it."

"Air you well, Mr. Secky," sed I. "Is your liver all right? How's your koff?"

"God bless me!" sed the Secky, risin hastily and glarin wildly at me, "what do you mean?"

"Oh, nothin partickler. Only it is one of the beauties of a Republican form of gov'ment that a Cabnet offisser can pack up his trunk and go home whenever he's sick. Sure nothin don't ail your liver?" sed I, pokin him putty vilent in the stummick.

I called on Abe. He received me kindly. I handed him my umbreller, and told him I'd have a check for it if he pleased. "That," sed he, "puts me in mind of a little story. There was a man, out in our parts who was so mean that he took his wife's coffin out of the back winder for fear he would rub the paint off the doorway. Wall, about this time there was a man in a adjacent town who had a green cotton umbreller."

"Did it fit him well? Was it custom made? Was he measured for it?"

"Measured for what?" said Abe.

"The umbreller?"

"Wall, as I was sayin," continnered the President, treatin the interruption with apparent comtempt, "this man sed he'd known that there umbreller ever since it was a pyrasol. Ha, ha, ha!"

"Yes," said I, larfin in a respectful manner, "but what has this man with the umbreller to do with the man who took his wife's coffin out of the back winder?"

"To be sure," said Abe—"what was it? I must have got two stories mixed together, which puts me in mind of another lit—"

"Never mind, Your Excellency. I called to congratulate you on your career, which has been a honest and a good one—unscared and unmoved by Secesh in front of you and Abbolish at the back of you—each one of which is a little wuss than the other if possible!

"Tell E. Stanton that his boldness, honesty, and vigger merits all praise, but to keep his under-garments on. E. Stanton has appeerently only one weakness, which it is, he can't allus keep his under-garments from flyin up over his hed. I mean that he occasionally dances in a peck-measure, and he don't look graceful at it."

I took my departer. "Good-bye, old sweetness!" sed Abe, shakin me cordgully by the hand.

"Adoo, my Prahayrie flower!" I replied, and made my exit. "Twenty-five thousand dollars a year and found," I soliloquized, as I walked down the street, "is putty good wages for a man with a modist appytite, but I reckon that it is wuth it to run the White House."

"What you bowt, sah? What the debble you doin, sah?"

It was the voice of an Afrikin Brother which thus spoke to me. There was a cullud procession before me which was escortin a elderly bald-hedded Afrikin to his home in Bates Alley. This distinguished Afrikin Brother had just returned from Lybery, and in turnin a corner puty suddent I hed stumbled and placed my hed agin his stummick in a rather strengthy manner.

"Do you wish to impede the progress of this procession, sah?"

"Certainly not, by all means! Procesh!"

And they went on.

I'm reconstructing my show. I've bo't a collection of life size wax figgers of our prominent Revolutionary forefathers. I bo't 'em at auction, and got 'em cheap. They stand me about two dollars and fifty cents (2 dols. 50 cents) per Revolutionary forefather.

Ever as always yours,

A. WARD.

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SCENES OUTSIDE THE FAIR GROUNDS.

There is some fun outside the Fair Ground. Any number of mountebanks have pitched their tents there, and are exhibiting all sorts of monstrosities to large and enthusiastic audiences. There are some eloquent men among the showmen. Some of them are Demosthenic. We looked around among them during the last day we honored the Fair with our brilliant presence, and were rather pleased at some things we heard and witnessed.

The man with the fat woman and the little woman and the little man was there.

"'Ere's a show, now," said he, "worth seeing. 'Ere's a entertainment that improves the morals. P.T. Barnum—you've all hearn o' him. What did he say to me? Sez he to me, sez P.T. Barnum, 'Sir, you have the all-firedest best show travelin!'—and all to be seen for the small sum of fifteen cents!"

The man with the blue hog was there. Says he, "Gentle-MEN, this beast can't turn round in a crockery crate ten feet square, and is of a bright indigo blue. Over five hundred persons have seen this wonderful BEING this mornin, and they said as they come out, 'What can these 'ere things be? Is it alive? Doth it breathe and have a being? Ah yes,' they say, 'it is true, and we have saw a entertainment as we never saw afore. 'Tis nature's [only fifteen cents—'ere's your change, sir] own sublime hand-works'—and walk right in."

The man with the wild mare was there.

"Now, then, my friends, is your time to see the gerratist queeriosity in the livin' world—a wild mare without no hair—captered on the roarin wild prahayries of the far distant West by sixteen Injuns. Don't fail to see this gerrate exhibition. Only fifteen cents. Don't go hum without seein the State Fair, an' you won't see the State Fair without you see my show. Gerratist exhibition in the known world, an' all for the small sum of fifteen cents."

Two gentlemen connected with the press here walked up and asked the showman, in a still small voice, if he extended the usual courtesies to editors. He said he did, and requested them to go in. While they were in some sly dog told him their names. When they came out the showman pretended to talk with them, though he didn't say a word. They were evidently in a hurry.

"There, gentleMEN, what do you think them gentlemen say? They air editors—editors, gentleMEN—Mr. ——, of the Cleveland ——, and Mr. ——, of the Detroit ——, and they say it is the gerratist show they ever seed in their born days!"

[Nothing but the tip ends of the editors' coat-tails could be seen when the showman concluded this speech.]

A smart-looking chap was doing a brisk business with a gambling contrivance. Seeing two policemen approach, he rapidly and ingeniously covered the dice up, mounted his table, and shouted:

"Ere's the only great show on the grounds! The highly trained and performing Mud Turtle with nine heads and seventeen tails, captured in a well-fortified hencoop, after a desperate struggle, in the lowlands of the Wabash!"

The facetious wretch escaped.

A grave, ministerial-looking and elderly man in a white choker had a gift-enterprise concern. "My friends," he solemnly said, "you will observe that this jewellery is elegant indeed, but I can afford to give it away, as I have a twin brother seven years older than I am, in New York City, who steals it a great deal faster than I can give it away. No blanks, my friends—all prizes—and only fifty cents a chance. I don't make anything myself, my friends—all I get goes to aid a sick woman—my aunt in the country, gentlemen—and besides I like to see folks enjoy themselves!"

The old scamp said all this with a perfectly grave countenance.

The man with the "wonderful calf with five legs and a huming head," and "the philosophical lung-tester," were there. Then there was the Flying Circus and any number of other ingenious contrivances to relieve young ladies and gentlemen from the rural districts of their spare change.

A young man was bitterly bewailing the loss of his watch, which had been cut from his pocket by some thief.

"You ain't smart," said a middle-aged individual in a dingy Kossuth hat with a feather in it, and who had a very you-can't-fool-me look. "I've been to the State Fair before, I want yer to understan, and knows my bizniss aboard a propeller. Here's MY money," he exultingly cried, slapping his pantaloons' pocket.

About half an hour after this we saw this smart individual rushing frantically around after a policeman. Somebody had adroitly relieved him of HIS money. In his search for a policeman he encountered the young man who wasn't smart.

"Haw, haw, haw," violently laughed the latter; "by G—, I thought you was smart—I thought you'd been to the State Fair before."

The smart man looked sad for a moment, but a knowing smile soon crossed his face, and drawing the young man who wasn't smart confidentially toward him, said—

"There wasn't only fifteen cents in coppers in my pocket—my MONEY is in my boot—they can't fool me—I'VE BEEN TO THE STATE FAIR BEFORE!!"

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THE NEGRO QUESTION.

I was sitting in the bar, quietly smokin a frugal pipe, when two middle-aged and stern-looking females and a young and pretty female suddenly entered the room. They were accompanied by two umberellers and a negro gentleman.

"Do you feel for the down-trodden?" said one of the females, a thin-faced and sharp-voiced person in green spectacles.

"Do I feel for it?" ansered the lan'lord, in a puzzled voice—"do I feel for it?"

"Yes; for the oppressed, the benighted?"

"Inasmuch as to which?" said the lan'lord.

"You see this man?" said the female, pintin her umbreller at the negro gentleman.

"Yes, marm, I see him."

"Yes!" said the female, raisin her voice to a exceedin high pitch, "you see him, and he's your brother!"

"No, I'm darned if he is!" said the lan'lord, hastily retreating to his beer-casks.

"And yours!" shouted the excited female, addressing me. "He is also your brother!"

"No, I think not, marm," I pleasantly replied. "The nearest we come to that color in our family was the case of my brother John. He had the janders for sev'ral years, but they finally left him. I am happy to state that, at the present time, he hasn't a solitary jander."

"Look at this man!" screamed the female.

I looked at him. He was an able-bodied, well-dressed, comfortable-looking negro. He looked as though he might heave three or four good meals a day into him without a murmur.

"Look a that down-trodden man!" cried the female.

"Who trod on him?" I inquired.

"Villains! despots!"

"Well," said the lan'lord, "why don't you go to the willins about it? Why do you come here tellin us niggers is our brothers, and brandishin your umbrellers round us like a lot of lunytics? You're wuss than the sperrit-rappers!"

"Have you," said middle-aged female No. 2, who was a quieter sort of person, "have you no sentiment—no poetry in your soul—no love for the beautiful? Dost never go into the green fields to cull the beautiful flowers?"

"I not only never dost," said the landlord, in an angry voice, "but I'll bet you five pound you can't bring a man as dares say I durst."

"The little birds," continued the female, "dost not love to gaze onto them?"

"I would I were a bird, that I might fly to thou!" I humorously sung, casting a sweet glance at the pretty young woman.

"Don't you look in that way at my dawter!" said female No. 1., in a violent voice; "you're old enough to be her father."

"'Twas an innocent look, dear madam," I softly said. "You behold in me an emblem of innocence and purity. In fact, I start for Rome by the first train to-morrow to sit as a model to a celebrated artist who is about to sculp a statue to be called Sweet Innocence. Do you s'pose a sculper would send for me for that purpose onless he knowd I was overflowing with innocency? Don't make a error about me."

"It is my opinyn," said the leading female, "that you're a scoffer and a wretch! Your mind is in a wusser beclouded state than the poor nergoes' we are seeking to aid. You are a groper in the dark cellar of sin. O sinful man!

'There is a sparkling fountCome, O come, and drink.'

No! you will not come and drink."

"Yes, he will," said the landlord, "if you'll treat. Jest try him."

"As for you," said the enraged female to the landlord, "you're a degraded bein, too low and wulgar to talk to."

"This is the sparklin fount for me, dear sister!" cried the lan'lord, drawin and drinkin a mug of beer. Having uttered which goak, he gave a low rumblin larf, and relapsed into silence.

"My colored fren," I said to the negro, kindly, "what is it all about?"

He said they was trying to raise money to send missionaries to the Southern States in America to preach to the vast numbers of negroes recently made free there. He said they were without the gospel. They were without tracts.

I said, "My fren," this is a seris matter. I admire you for trying to help the race to which you belong, and far be it from me to say anything again carrying the gospel among the blacks of the South. Let them go to them by all means. But I happen to individually know that there are some thousands of liberated blacks in the South who are starvin. I don't blame anybody for this, but it is a very sad fact. Some are really too ill to work, some can't get work to do, and others are too foolish to see any necessity for workin. I was down there last winter and I observed that this class had plenty of preachin for their souls, but skurce any vittles for their stummux. Now, if it is proposed to send flour and bacon along with the gospel, the idea is really an excellent one. If, on t'other hand, it is proposed to send preachin alone, all I can say is that it's a hard case for the niggers. If you expect a colored person to get deeply interested in a tract when his stummuck is empty, you expect too much."

I gave the negro as much as I could afford, and the kind-hearted lan'lord did the same. I said:

"Farewell, my colored fren, I wish you well, certainly. You are now as free as the eagle. Be like him and soar. But don't attempt to convert a Ethiopian person while his stummuck yearns for vittles. And you, ladies—I hope you are ready to help the poor and unfortunate at home, as you seem to help the poor and unfortunate abroad."

When they had gone, the lan'lord said, "Come into the garden, Ward." And we went and culled some carrots for dinner.

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ARTEMUS WARD ON HEALTH.

[The following fragment from the pen of Artemus Ward was written in the last days of his illness, and was found amongst the loose papers on the table beside his bed. It contains the last written jests of the dying jester, and is illustrative of that strong spirit of humor which even extreme exhaustion and the near approach of death itself could not wholly destroy.

There is an anecdote related of Thomas Hood to the effect that when he was just upon the point of dying, his friend, Mr. F.O. Ward, visited him, and, to amuse him, related some of his adventures in the low parts of the metropolis in his capacity as a sanitary commissioner. "Pray desist," said Hood; "your anecdote gives me the back-slum-bago." The proximity of death could no more deprive poor Artemus of his power to jest than it could Thomas Hood. When nothing else was left him to joke upon, when he could no longer seek fun in the city streets, or visit the Tower of London and call it "a sweet boon," his own shattered self suggested a theme for jesting. He commenced this paper "On Health." The purport of it, I believe, was to ridicule doctors generally; for Artemus was bitterly sarcastic on his medical attendants, and he had some good reasons for being so. A few weeks before he died, a German physician examined his throat with a laryngoscope, and told him that nothing was the matter with him except a slight inflammation of the larynx. Another physician told him that he had heart disease, and a third assured him that he merely required his throat to be sponged two or three times a day, and take a preparation of tortoise shell for medicine, to perfectly recover! Every doctor made a different diagnosis, and each had a different specific. One alone of the many physicians to whom Artemus applied seemed to be fully aware that the poor patient was dying of consumption in its most formidable form. Not merely phthisis, but a cessation of functions and a wasting away of the organs most concerned in the vital processes. Artemus saw how much the doctors were at fault, and used to smile at them with a sadly scornful smile as they left the sick room. "I must write a paper," said he, "about health and doctors." The few paragraphs which follow are, I believe, all that he wrote on the subject. Whether the matter became too serious to him for further jesting, or whether his hand became too weak to hold the pen, I cannot say. The article terminates as abruptly as did the life of its gentle, kind, ill-fated author.

E.P.H.]

Ontil quite recent, I've bin a helthy individooal. I'm near 60, and yit I've got a muskle into my arms which don't make my fists resemble the tread of a canary bird when they fly out and hit a man.

Only a few weeks ago I was exhibitin in East Skowhegan, in a b'ildin which had form'ly bin ockepyied by a pugylist—one of them fellers which hits from the shoulder, and teaches the manly art of self defens. And he cum and said he was goin in free, in consekence of previ'sly ockepyin sed b'ildin, with a large yeller dog. I sed, "To be sure, sir, but not with those yeller dogs." He sed, "Oh, yes." I sed, "Oh, no." He sed, "Do you want to be ground to powder?" I sed, "Yes, I do, if there is a powder-grindist handy." When he struck me a disgustin blow in my left eye, which caused that concern to at once close for repairs; but he didn't hurt me any more. I went for him. I went for him energet'cally. His parents live near by, and I will simply state that 15 minits after I'd gone for him, his mother, seein the prostrate form of her son approachin the house on to a shutter carrid by four men, run out doors, keerfully looked him over, and sed, "My son, you've been foolin round a thrashin masheen. You went in at the end where they put the grain in, come out with the straw, and then got up in the thingumajig and let the hosses tred on you, didn't you, my son?"

You can jedge by this what a disagreeable person I am when I'm angry.

But to resoom about helth. I cum of a helthy fam'ly.

The Wards has allus been noted for helthiness.

The fust of my ancestors that I know anything about was Abijah Ward and his wife, Abygil Ward who came over with the Pilgrims in the "Mayflower." Most of the Pilgrims was sick on the passige, but my ancestor wasn't. Even when the tempist raged and the billers howled, he sold another Pilgrim a kag of apple sass. The Pilgrim who bo't it was angry when he found that under a few layers of sass the rest was sawdust, and my ancestor sed he wouldn't have b'leeved such wickedness could exist, when he ascertained that the bill sed Pilgrim gave him was onto a broken bank, and wasn't wuth the price of a glass of new gin. It will be thus seen that my fust ancestor had a commercial mind.

My ancestors has all bin helthy people, tho' their pursoots in life has been vari's.

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A FRAGMENT.

[Among the papers, letters and miscellanea left on the table of poor Ward was found the fragment which follows. Diligent search failed to discover any beginning or end to it. The probability is that it consists of part of a paper intended to describe a comic trip round England. To write a comic itinerary of an English tour was one of the author's favorite ideas; and another favorite one was to travel on the Continent and compile a comic "Murray's Guide." No interest attaches to this mere scrap other than that it exemplifies what the writer would have attempted had his life been longer.]

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At North Berwick there was a maniacal stampede toward the little house by the railside, where they sell such immense quantities of sponge-cake, which is very sweet and very yellow, but which lies rather more heavily on the stomach than raw turnips, as I ascertained one day from actual experience. This is not stated because I have any spite against this little house by the railside. Their mince-pies are nobly made, and their apple-pies are unsurpassed. Some years ago there used to be a very pretty girl at this house, and one day, while I was struggling rapidly with a piece of mince-pie, I was so unfortunate as to wink slightly at her. The rash act was discovered by a yellow-haired party, who stated that she was to be his wife ere long, and that he "expected" he could lick any party who winked at her. A cursory examination of his frame convinced me that he could lick me with disgustin ease, so I told him it was a complaint of the eyes. "They are both so," I added, "and they have been so from infancy's hour. See here!" And I commenced winking in a frightful manner. I escaped, but it was inconvenient for me for some time afterwards, because whenever I passed over the road I naturally visited the refreshment house, and was compelled to wink in a manner which took away the appetites of other travellers, and one day caused a very old lady to state, with her mouth full of sponge-cake, that she had cripples and drunkards in her family, but thanks to the heavens above, no idiots without any control over their eyes, looking sternly at me as she spoke.

That was years ago. Besides, the wink was a pure accident. I trust that my unblemished character—but I will not detain you further with this sad affair.

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ARTEMUS WARD

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