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
Yes. I've been to Stratford onto the Avon, the Birthplace of
Shakspeare. Mr. S. is now no more. He's been dead over three hundred
(300) years. The peple of his native town are justly proud of him.
They cherish his mem'ry, and them as sell pictures of his birthplace,
&c., make it prof'tible cherishin it. Almost everybody buys a pictur to
put into their Albiom.
As I stood gazing on the spot where Shakspeare is s'posed to have
fell down on the ice and hurt hisself when a boy, (this spot cannot
be bought--the town authorities say it shall never be taken from
Stratford), I wondered if three hundred years hence picturs of my
birthplace will be in demand? Will the peple of my native town be proud
of me in three hundred years? I guess they won't short of that time
because they say the fat man weighing 1000 pounds which I exhibited
there was stuffed out with pillers and cushions, which he said one very
hot day in July, "Oh bother, I can't stand this," and commenced pullin
the pillers out from under his weskit, and heavin 'em at the audience.
I never saw a man lose flesh so fast in my life. The audience said I
was a pretty man to come chiselin my own townsmen in that way. I said,
"Do not be angry, feller-citizens. I exhibited him simply as a work of
art. I simply wished to show you that a man could grow fat without the
aid of cod-liver oil." But they wouldn't listen to me. They are a low
and grovelin set of peple, who excite a feelin of loathin in every brest
where lorfty emotions and original idees have a bidin place.
I stopped at Leamington a few minits on my way to Stratford onto the
Avon, and a very beautiful town it is. I went into a shoe shop to make
a purchis, and as I entered I saw over the door those dear familiar
words, "By Appintment: H.R.H.;" and I said to the man, "Squire, excuse
me, but this is too much. I have seen in London four hundred boot and
shoe shops by Appintment: H.R.H.; and now you're at it. It is simply
onpossible that the Prince can wear 400 pairs of boots. Don't tell me,"
I said, in a voice choked with emotion--"Oh, do not tell me that you
also make boots for him. Say slippers--say that you mend a boot now and
then for him; but do not tell me that you make 'em reg'lar for him."
The man smilt, and said I didn't understand these things. He said I
perhaps had not noticed in London that dealers in all sorts of articles
was By Appintment. I said, "Oh, hadn't I?" Then a sudden thought
flasht over me. "I have it!" I said. "When the Prince walks through a
street, he no doubt looks at the shop windows."
The man said, "No doubt."
"And the enterprisin tradesman," I continnerd, "the moment the Prince
gets out of sight, rushes frantically and has a tin sign painted, By
Appintment, H.R.H.! It is a beautiful, a great idee!"
I then bought a pair of shoe strings, and wringin the shopman's honest
hand, I started for the Tomb of Shakspeare in a hired fly. It look't
however more like a spider.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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