[LECTURE BY ARTEMUS WARD.]
You are entirely welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to my little picture-shop.
I couldn’t give you a very clear idea of the Mormons—and Utah—and the Plains—and the Rocky Mountains—without opening a picture-shop—and therefore I open one.
I don’t expect to do great things here—but I have thought that if I could make money enough to buy me a passage to New Zealand I should feel that I had not lived in vain.
I don’t want to live in vain.——I’d rather live in Margate—or here. But I wish when the Egyptians built this hall they had given it a little more ventilation.
I really don’t care for money. I only travel round to see the world and exhibit my clothes. These clothes I have on were a great success in America.
How often do fortunes ruin young men? I should like to be ruined, but I can get on very well as I am.
I am not an artist. I don’t paint myself——though, perhaps, if I were a middle-aged single lady I should——yet I have a passion for pictures——I have had a great many pictures—photographs—taken of myself. Some of them are very pretty—or rather sweet to look at for a short time—and, as I said before, I like them. I’ve always loved pictures.
I could draw on wood at a very tender age. When a mere child I once drew a small cartload of raw turnips over a wooden bridge.——The people of the village noticed me. I drew their attention.