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
With the exception of my Uncle Wilyim--who, as I've before stated, is
a uncle by marrige only, who is a low cuss and filled his coat pockets
with pies and biled eggs at his weddin breakfast, given to him by my
father, and made the clergyman as united him a present of my father's
new overcoat, and when my father on discoverin' it got in a rage and
denounced him, Uncle Wilyim said the old man (meanin my parent) hadn't
any idee of first class Humer!--with the exception of this wretched
Uncle the escutchin of my fam'ly has never been stained by Games. The
little harmless deceptions I resort to in my perfeshion I do not call
Games. They are sacrifisses to Art.
I come of a very clever fam'ly.
The Wards is a very clever fam'ly indeed.
I believe we are descendid from the Puritins, who nobly fled from a land
of despitism to a land of freedim, where they could not only enjoy their
own religion, but prevent everybody else from enjoyin his.
As I said before, we are a very clever fam'ly.
I was strolling up Regent Street the other day, thinkin what a clever
fam'ly I come of, and looking at the gay shop-winders. I've got some
new close since you last saw me. I saw them others wouldn't do. They
carrid the observer too far back into the dim vister of the past, and I
gave 'em to a Orfun Asylum. The close I wear now I bo't of Mr. Moses,
in the Commercial Road. They was expressly made, Mr. Moses inforemd
me, for a nobleman, but as they fitted him too muchly, partic'ly the
trows'rs (which is blue, with large red and white checks) he had said:
"My dear feller, make me some more, only mind--be sure you sell these to
some genteel old feller."
I like to saunter thro' Regent Street. The shops are pretty, and it
does the old man's hart good to see the troops of fine healthy girls
which one may always see there at certain hours in the afternoon, who
don't spile their beauty by devourin cakes and sugar things, as too many
of the American and French lasses do. It's a mistake about everybody
being out of town, I guess. Regent Street is full. I'm here; and as I
said before, I come of a very clever fam'ly.
As I was walkin along, amoosin myself by stickin my penknife into the
calves of the footmen who stood waitin by the swell-coaches (not one of
whom howled with angwish), I was accosted by a man of about thirty-five
summers, who said, "I have seen that face somewheres afore!"
He was a little shabby in his wearin apparil. His coat was one of those
black, shiny garments, which you can always tell have been burnished by
adversity; but he was very gentlemanly.
"Was it in the Crimea, comrade? Yes, it was. It was at the stormin of
Sebastopol, where I had a narrow escape from death, that we met."
I said, "No, I wasn't at Sebastopol; I escaped a fatal wound by not bein
there. It was a healthy old fortress," I added.
"It was. But it fell. It came down with a crash."
"And plucky boys they was who brought her down," I added; "and hurrah
for 'em!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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