Certain curious brown splotches appearing in the foreground, Artemus pointed gravely to them, and said:
"These are intended for horses; I know they are, because the artist told me so. After two years, he came to me one morning and said, 'Mr. Ward, I cannot conceal it from you any longer; they are horses.'"
Apropos of nothing he observed:
"I really don't care for money; I only travel around to show my clothes."
This was a favorite joke of his. He would look with a piteous expression of discomfort and almost misery at his black trousers and swallowtail coat, a costume in which he said he was always most wretched.
"These clothes I have on," he continued, "were a great success in America." And then quite irrelevantly and rather hastily, "How often do large fortunes ruin young men! I should like to be ruined, but I can get on very well as I am!"
So the lecture dribbled on with little fragments of impertinent biography, mere pegs for slender witticisms like this:
"When quite a child I used to draw on wood. I drew a small cartload of raw material over a wooden bridge, the people of the village noticed me, I drew their attention, they said I had a future before me; up to that time I had an idea it was behind me."
Or this:
"I became a man. I have always been mixed up with art. I have an uncle who takes photographs, and I have a servant who takes anything he can set his hands on."