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
The smart man looked sad for a moment, but a knowing smile soon crossed
his face, and drawing the young man who wasn't smart confidentially
toward him, said--
"There wasn't only fifteen cents in coppers in my pocket--my MONEY is in
my boot--they can't fool me--I'VE BEEN TO THE STATE FAIR BEFORE!!"
____________________
THE NEGRO QUESTION.
I was sitting in the bar, quietly smokin a frugal pipe, when two
middle-aged and stern-looking females and a young and pretty female
suddenly entered the room. They were accompanied by two umberellers and
a negro gentleman.
"Do you feel for the down-trodden?" said one of the females, a
thin-faced and sharp-voiced person in green spectacles.
"Do I feel for it?" ansered the lan'lord, in a puzzled voice--"do I feel
for it?"
"Yes; for the oppressed, the benighted?"
"Inasmuch as to which?" said the lan'lord.
"You see this man?" said the female, pintin her umbreller at the negro
gentleman.
"Yes, marm, I see him."
"Yes!" said the female, raisin her voice to a exceedin high pitch, "you
see him, and he's your brother!"
"No, I'm darned if he is!" said the lan'lord, hastily retreating to his
beer-casks.
"And yours!" shouted the excited female, addressing me. "He is also
your brother!"
"No, I think not, marm," I pleasantly replied. "The nearest we come to
that color in our family was the case of my brother John. He had the
janders for sev'ral years, but they finally left him. I am happy to
state that, at the present time, he hasn't a solitary jander."
"Look at this man!" screamed the female.
I looked at him. He was an able-bodied, well-dressed,
comfortable-looking negro. He looked as though he might heave three or
four good meals a day into him without a murmur.
"Look a that down-trodden man!" cried the female.
"Who trod on him?" I inquired.
"Villains! despots!"
"Well," said the lan'lord, "why don't you go to the willins about it?
Why do you come here tellin us niggers is our brothers, and brandishin
your umbrellers round us like a lot of lunytics? You're wuss than the
sperrit-rappers!"
"Have you," said middle-aged female No. 2, who was a quieter sort of
person, "have you no sentiment--no poetry in your soul--no love for the
beautiful? Dost never go into the green fields to cull the beautiful
flowers?"
"I not only never dost," said the landlord, in an angry voice, "but I'll
bet you five pound you can't bring a man as dares say I durst."
"The little birds," continued the female, "dost not love to gaze onto
them?"
"I would I were a bird, that I might fly to thou!" I humorously sung,
casting a sweet glance at the pretty young woman.
"Don't you look in that way at my dawter!" said female No. 1., in a
violent voice; "you're old enough to be her father."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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