The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (HTML edition)

PART I.
PART II.
PART III.
PART IV.
PART V.
PART VI.
PART VII.

Charles Farrar Browne, better known to the world as Artemus Ward, was born at Waterford, Oxford County, Maine, on the twenty-sixth of April, 1834, and died of consumption at Southampton, England, on Wednesday, the sixth of March, 1867.
His father, Levi Browne, was a land surveyor, and Justice of the Peace. His mother, Caroline E. Brown, is still living, and is a descendant from Puritan stock.
Mr. Browne's business manager, Mr. Hingston, once asked him about his Puritanic origin, when he replied: I think we came from Jerusalem, for my father's name was Levi and we had a Moses and a Nathan in the family, but my poor brother's name was Cyrus; so, perhaps, that makes us Persians.
Charles was partially educated at the Waterford school, when family circumstances induced his parents to apprentice him to learn the rudiments of printing in the office of the Skowhegan Clarion, published some miles to the north of his native village. Here he passed through the dreadful ordeal to which a printer's devil is generally subjected. He always kept his temper; and his eccentric boy jokes are even now told by the residents of Skowhegan.