The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 1: Essays, Sketches, and LettersWard, Artemus
General
The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 1: Essays, Sketches, and Letters
Ward, Artemus
American wit and humor
Now you know, gents, that I don't admire opry music. But I
like Miss Picklehomony's stile. I like her gate. She suits
me. There has bin grater singers and there has bin more
bootiful wimin, but no more fassinatin young female ever longed
for a new gown, or side to place her hed agin a vest pattern
than Maria Picklehomony. Fassinatin peple is her best holt.
She was born to make hash of men's buzzums & other wimin mad
becawz thay ain't Picklehomonies. Her face sparkles with
amuzin cussedness & about 200 (two hundred) little bit of funny
devils air continually dancing champion jigs in her eyes, sed
eyes bein brite enuff to lite a pipe by. How I shood like to
have little Maria out on my farm in Baldinsville, Injianny, whare
she cood run in the tall grass, wrastle with the boys, cut up
strong at parin bees, make up faces behind the minister's back,
tie auction bills to the skoolmaster's coat-tales, set all the
fellers crazy after her, & holler & kick up, & go it just as
much as she wanted to! But I diegress. Every time she cum
canterin out I grew more and more delighted with her. When she
bowed her hed I bowed mine. When she powtid her lips I powtid
mine. When she larfed I larfed. When she jerked her hed back
and took a larfin survey of the aujience, sendin a broadside of
sassy smiles in among em, I tried to unjint myself & kollapse.
When, in tellin how she drempt she lived in Marble Halls, she
sed it tickled her more than all the rest to dream she loved
her feller still the same, I made a effort to swaller myself;
but when, in the next song, she look strate at me & called me
her Dear, I wildly told the man next to me he mite hav my close,
as I shood never want 'em again no more in this world. [The
"Plain Dealer" (The Cleveland "Plain Dealer," a well-known
Ohio newspaper, to which Mr. Artemus Ward wishes us to
understand he contributed.) containin this communicashun is
not to be sent to my famerly in Baldinsville under no
circumstances whatsomever.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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