Some of Artemus Ward's effects were produced by cacography or bad spelling, but there was genius in the wildly erratic way in which he handled even this rather low order of humor. It is a curious commentary on the wretchedness of our English orthography that the phonetic spelling of a word, as for example, wuz for was, should be {567} in itself an occasion of mirth. Other verbal effects of a different kind were among his devices, as in the passage where the seventeen widows of a deceased Mormon offered themselves to Artemus.
"And I said, 'Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thusness?'
They hove a sigh—seventeen sighs of different size. They said—
"'O, soon thou will be gonested away.'
"I told them that when I got ready to leave a place I wentested.'
"They said, 'Doth not like us?'
"I said, 'I doth—I doth.'
"I also said, 'I hope your intentions are honorable, as I am a lone child—my parents being far—far away.'
"They then said, 'Wilt not marry us?'
"I said, 'O no, it cannot was.'
"When they cried, 'O cruel man! this is too much!—O! too much,' I told them that it was on account of the muchness that I declined."