"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.
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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:
