The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (HTML edition)Ward, Artemus
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The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (HTML edition)
Ward, Artemus
American wit and humor
"Ber-lud! Ber-lud! Ber-lud!" shrieked the Rover, as he drew a
horse-pistol and fired it at the King, who fell fatally killed, his last
words being, "WE ARE GOVENRED TOO MUCH--THIS IS THE LAST OF EARTH!!!"
At this exciting juncture Messrs. O'Mulligan and Schnappsgoot (who had
previously entered into a copartnership with the Rover for the purpose
of doing a general killing business) burst into the room and cut off
the heads and let out the inwards of all the noblemen they encountered.
They then killed themselves and died like heroes, wrapped up in the Star
Spangled Banner, to slow music.
_______________
FINALE.
The Rover fled. He was captured near Marseilles and thrust into prison,
where he lay for sixteen weary years, all attempts to escape being
futile. One night a lucky thought struck him. He raised the window
and got out. But he was unhappy. Remorse and dyspepsia preyed upon his
vitals. He tried Boerhave's Holland Bitters and the Retired Physician's
Sands of Life, and got well. He then married the lovely Countess
D'Smith, and lived to a green old age, being the triumph of virtue and
downfall of vice.
____________________
RED HAND: A TALE OF REVENGE.
CHAPTER I.
"Life's but a walking shadow--a poor player."--Shakespeare. "Let me die
to sweet music."--J.W. Shuckers.
"Go forth, Clarence Stanley! Hence to the bleak world, dog! You have
repaid my generosity with the blackest ingratitude. You have forged my
name on a five thousand dollar check--have repeatedly robbed my money
drawer--have perpetrated a long series of high-handed villanies, and now
to-night, because, forsooth, I'll not give you more money to spend
on your dissolute companions, you break a chair over my aged head.
Anyway! You are a young man of small moral principle. Don't ever speak
to me again!"
These harsh words fell from the lips of Horace Blinker, one of the
merchant princes of New York City. He spoke to Clarence Stanley, his
adopted son and a beautiful youth of nineteen summers. In vain did
Clarence plead his poverty, his tender age, his inexperience; in vain
did he fasten those lustrous blue eyes of his appealingly and tearfully
upon Mr. Blinker, and tell him he would make the pecuniary matter all
right in the fall, and that he merely shattered a chair over his head
by way of a joke. The stony-hearted man was remorseless, and that night
Clarence Stanly became a wanderer in the wide, wide world. As he
went forth he uttered these words: "H. Blinker, beware! A RED HAND is
around, my fine feller!"
CHAPTER. II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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