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
Napoleon has no right in Mexico. Mexico may deserve a licking. That
is possible enough. Most people do. But nobody has any right to lick
Mexico except the United States. We have a right, I flatter myself, to
lick this entire continent, including ourselves, any time we want to.
_______________ The signal gun is fired at 11, and we go off to the
steamer in small boats.
We reach Manzanillo, another coast place, twenty-four hours after
leaving Acapulco. Manzanillo is a little Mexican village, and looked
very wretched indeed, sweltering away there on the hot sands. But it
is a port of some importance, nevertheless, because a great deal of
merchandise finds its way to the interior from there. The white and
green flag of Mexico floats from a red steam-tug (the navy of Mexico,
by the way, consists of two tugs, a disabled raft, and a basswood
life-preserver), and the Captain of the Port comes off to us in his
small boat, climbs up the side of the St. Louis, and folds the healthy
form of Captain Hudson to his breast. There is no wharf here, and we
have to anchor off the town.
There was a wharf, but the enterprising Mexican peasantry, who subsist
by poling merchandise ashore in dug-outs, indignantly tore it up.
We take on here some young Mexicans, from Colima, who are going to
California. They are of the better class, and one young man (who was
educated in Madrid) speaks English rather better than I write it.
Be careful not to admire any article of an educated Mexican's dress,
because if you do he will take it right off and give it to you, and
sometimes this might be awkward.
I said: "What a beautiful cravat you wear!"
"It is yours!" he exclaimed, quickly unbuckling it; and I could not
induce him to take it back again.
I am glad I did not tell his sister, who was with him and with whom
I was lucky enough to get acquainted, what a beautiful white hand she
had. She might have given it to me on the spot; and that, as she had
soft eyes, a queenly form, and a half million or so in her own right,
would have made me feel bad.
Reports reach us here of high-handed robberies by the banditti all along
the road to the City of Mexico. They steal clothes as well as coin. A
few days since the mail coach entered the city with all the passengers
stark-naked! They must have felt mortified.
_______________
IV.
CALIFORNIA.
We reach San Francisco one Sunday afternoon. I am driven to the
Occidental Hotel by a kind-hearted hackman, who states that inasmuch
as I have come out there to amuse people, he will only charge me five
dollars. I pay it in gold, of course, because greenbacks are not
current on the Pacific coast.
Many of the citizens of San Francisco remember the Sabbath day to keep
it jolly; and the theatres, the circus, the minstrels, and the music
halls are all in full blast to-night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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