The fact is Artemus intended having the finest scenes that could be painted, but he gave that up on account of the expense, and then determined to get the worst as the next best thing for his purpose. When anything very bad came up he would pause and gaze admiringly at the canvas, and then look round a little reproachfully at the company. "This picture," he would say, "is a great work of art; it is an oil painting done in petroleum. It is by the Old Masters. It was the last thing they did before dying. They did this, and then they expired. I wish you were nearer to it so you could see it better. I wish I could take it to your residences and let you see it by daylight. Some of the greatest artists in London come here every morning before daylight with lanterns to look at it. They say they never saw anything like it before, and they hope they never shall again!" Certain curious brown splotches appearing in the foreground, Artemus pointed gravely to them, and said: "These are intended for horses; I know they are, because the artist told me so. After two years, he came to me one morning and said, 'Mr. Ward, I cannot conceal it from you any longer; they are horses.'" Apropos of nothing he observed: "I really don't care for money; I only travel around to show my clothes." This was a favorite joke of his. He would look with a piteous expression of discomfort and almost misery at his black trousers and swallowtail coat, a costume in which he said he was always most wretched. "These clothes I have on," he continued, "were a great success in America." And then quite irrelevantly and rather hastily, "How often do large fortunes ruin young men! I should like to be ruined, but I can get on very well as I am!" So the lecture dribbled on with little fragments of impertinent biography, mere pegs for slender witticisms like this: "When quite a child I used to draw on wood. I drew a small cartload of raw material over a wooden bridge, the people of the village noticed me, I drew their attention, they said I had a future before me; up to that time I had an idea it was behind me." Or this: "I became a man. I have always been mixed up with art. I have an uncle who takes photographs, and I have a servant who takes anything he can set his hands on." With one more example from his life among the Mormons, which, perhaps, though brief, includes a greater variety of wit and humor than any single passage I could select, I must conclude my memorial glimpses of this incomparable and lamented humorist. "I regret to say that efforts were made to make a Mormon of me while I was in Utah. "It was leap year when I was there, and seventeen young widows--the wives of a deceased Mormon (he died by request)--offered me their hearts and hands. I called upon them one day, and taking their soft, white hands in mine--which made eighteen hands altogether--I found them in tears. And I said 'Why is this thus?--what is the reason of this thusness?'