The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 7: MiscellaneousWard, Artemus
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The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 7: Miscellaneous
Ward, Artemus
American wit and humor
So we put on our go-to-meetings, and yaller kid-skins, and sot off.
There was a purty tidy fixin of shrubs and statooary as we went in
(but nuthin ekal to the Bowery Saloon, New York!), and stairs up and
stairs down, and gals in opera clokes ascendin and D-scendin.
First we go up into a big room with a blaze o' lite and a crowd of
cumpany. The Squire whispers to me, and sez he'll pint out the
lokial celebrities. At the end of the room is a great pictur,
representin a stout femail on a tarnation dark back-ground. The
critters scrowded up to it, and looked on in hor. Presently I feels
the Squire nudging me.
"Do you see that individooal," sed he, "with Hyacinthian curls, and
his eye in a fine frenzy rollin! That's the great art critic, who
lays down the lor for Bristol and ets vicinity."
So I pushed up cloas, and sed I to the creteck, "Wall, Mister, what
dew think of that air piece of canvas staining?"
At first he Ide me loftily, and made no reply. At last he spoak
(with grate deliberashun). "Not yet have I mastered the pictur. I'm
a studyin of the onperfectly-seen vizionoimies behind. Them guards
is a phernomenon. The soul of the painter has projected itself
thrugh the august glooms."
"Don't see it," sez I. "Them shadders want glazin--and the
middletints is no whur. Guess if Hiram Applesquash (our 'domestic
decorator' to hum) had pertrayed them guards, he would hev slicked
off their Uniforms as bright as a New England tulip."
The creteck regarded me With Contemptoous indignashun.
"Hullo!" sed I next, "whose been and stolen a signboard, and stuck
it up in this refined society?"
"To what do you defer?" sez he, still very fridgid.
"To that corpulent figgur," sez I, "in military fixins."
"That, sair," sez he, with severity, "is a portrait of his Majusty
the King of Denmark, lately disEased."
"A portraickt of his cloze, you mean," sez I. "Is that sprorling
pictur a work of art? (N.B.--This I sed sarcasticul.) Hiram A.
touched off a new Sign for the Tavern at Baldinsville jest before
I saled, and his 'President's Head' would bete this by a long chalk
any day." With that I scowled at the Creteck, and left him looking
considerable smawl pertaters.
Arter this we went down into the Cole-hole, wich they had cleaned
out for the night and white-washed. Here I own was buties of natur.
I always had a liken for water-colar paintin, and sometimes take a
sketcht in that way myself. Me and Squire tried to get a good look,
but was engulphed in an oshun of hot galls, who kinder steamed again.
The gas, close over our heads, nigh made our brains bile over, so
sez I, "Let's make tracks out of this, Squire. It ain't civet
(Schakspar) here. This parfume of humanity is horrid unhandsome."
"Let's have a cup of corfy," says he, "to repare exhorsted natur."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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