They dread it as a certain personage is said to dread holy water, and for the same reason that thieves fear policemen--it finds them out.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!"One of these ornaments of the vestry complained to the doorkeepers, and denounced the lecture as an imposition; "and," said the wealthy parishioner, "as for the panorama, it's the worst painted thing Iever saw in all my life!"
But the entertainment, original, humorous, and racy though it was, was drawing to a close! In the fight between youth and death, death was to conquer.By medical advice Charles Browne went for a short time to Jersey--but the breezes of Jersey were powerless.He wrote to London to his nearest and dearest friends--the members of a literary club of which he was a member--to complain that his "loneliness weighed on him." He was brought back, but could not sustain the journey farther than Southampton.There the members of the beforementioned club travelled from London to see him--two at a time--that he might be less lonely--and for the unwearying solicitude of his friend and agent, Mr.Hingston, and to the kindly sympathy of the United States Consul at Southampton, Charles Browne's best and dearest friends had cause to be grateful.Icannot 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!"Charles Browne died beloved and regretted by all who knew him, and by many who had known him but a few weeks; and when he drew his last breath, there passed away the Spirit of a true gentleman.
T.W.ROBERTSON
London, August 11, 1868.
PREFATORY NOTE
BY EDWARD P.HINGSTON.
In Cleveland, Ohio, the pleasant city beside the lakes, Artemus Ward first determined to become a public lecturer.He and I rambled through Cleveland together after his return from California.He called on some old friends at the Herald office, then went over to the Weddel House, and afterwards strolled across to the offices of the "Plain Dealer", where, in his position as sub-editor, he had written many of his earlier essays.Artemus inquired for Mr.Gray, the editor, who chanced to be absent.Looking round at the vacant desks and inkstained furniture, Artemus was silent for a minute or two, and then burst into one of those peculiar chuckling fits of laughter in which he would occasionally indulge; not a loud laugh, but a shaking of the whole body with an impulse of merriment which set every muscle in motion."Here," said he, "here's where they called me a fool." The remembrance of their so calling him seemed to afford him intense amusement.
From the office of the Cleveland Plain Dealer we continued our tour of the town.Presently we found ourselves in front of Perry's statue, the monument erected to commemorate the naval engagement on Lake Erie, wherein the Americans came off victorious.Artemus looked up to the statue, laid his finger to the side of his nose, and, in his quaint manner, remarked, "I wonder whether they called him 'a fool' too, when he went to fight!"The remark, following close as it did upon his laughing fit in the newspaper office, caused me to inquire why he had been called "a fool," and who had called him so.
"It was the opinion of my friends on the paper," he replied."Itold them that I was going in for lecturing.They laughed at me, and called me `a fool.' Don't you think they were right?"Then we sauntered up Euclid Street, under the shade of its avenue of trees.As we went along, Artemus Ward recounted to me the story of his becoming a lecturer.Our conversation on that agreeable evening is fresh in my remembrance.Memory still listens to the voice of my companion in the stroll, still sees the green trees of Euclid Street casting their shadows across our path, and still joins in the laugh with Artemus, who, having just returned from California, where he had taken sixteen hundred dollars at one lecture, did not think that to be evidence of his having lost his senses.
