____________________ ARTEMUS WARD ON HEALTH. [The following fragment from the pen of Artemus Ward was written in the last days of his illness, and was found amongst the loose papers on the table beside his bed.  It contains the last written jests of the dying jester, and is illustrative of that strong spirit of humor which even extreme exhaustion and the near approach of death itself could not wholly destroy. There is an anecdote related of Thomas Hood to the effect that when he was just upon the point of dying, his friend, Mr. F.O. Ward, visited him, and, to amuse him, related some of his adventures in the low parts of the metropolis in his capacity as a sanitary commissioner.  "Pray desist," said Hood; "your anecdote gives me the back-slum-bago."  The proximity of death could no more deprive poor Artemus of his power to jest than it could Thomas Hood.  When nothing else was left him to joke upon, when he could no longer seek fun in the city streets, or visit the Tower of London and call it "a sweet boon," his own shattered self suggested a theme for jesting.  He commenced this paper "On Health."  The purport of it, I believe, was to ridicule doctors generally; for Artemus was bitterly sarcastic on his medical attendants, and he had some good reasons for being so.  A few weeks before he died, a German physician examined his throat with a laryngoscope, and told him that nothing was the matter with him except a slight inflammation of the larynx.  Another physician told him that he had heart disease, and a third assured him that he merely required his throat to be sponged two or three times a day, and take a preparation of tortoise shell for medicine, to perfectly recover!  Every doctor made a different diagnosis, and each had a different specific.  One alone of the many physicians to whom Artemus applied seemed to be fully aware that the poor patient was dying of consumption in its most formidable form.  Not merely phthisis, but a cessation of functions and a wasting away of the organs most concerned in the vital processes.  Artemus saw how much the doctors were at fault, and used to smile at them with a sadly scornful smile as they left the sick room.  "I must write a paper," said he, "about health and doctors."  The few paragraphs which follow are, I believe, all that he wrote on the subject.  Whether the matter became too serious to him for further jesting, or whether his hand became too weak to hold the pen, I cannot say.  The article terminates as abruptly as did the life of its gentle, kind, ill-fated author. E.P.H.]       Ontil quite recent, I've bin a helthy individooal.  I'm near 60, and yit I've got a muskle into my arms which don't make my fists resemble the tread of a canary bird when they fly out and hit a man.