“I have agreed with many people who think that Ward should be in some trade or writing books. But I don’t know about it. He has a special kind of mind, and, rightly used, he would make an excellent teacher of mental science. In one way of looking at it his life is wasted. But if he refreshes and cheers other people as he does me, I can’t see how he could make a better investment of his life. I smile and smile here as one by one the crowd passes me to shake hands, until it is a week before my face gets straight. But it is a duty. I could defeat our whole army to-morrow by looking glum at a reception or by refusing to smile for three consecutive hours.[2] Ward says he carries a bottle of sunshine in ‘the other pocket,’ to treat his friends. I like that idea.
“Ward is dreadfully misunderstood by a lot of dull people. They insist on taking him seriously. An old lady in Baltimore held me up one night after I had told some of Artemus Ward’s remarks, and she may not have forgiven me yet. I told his tale of the rich land out in Iowa, where the farmer threw a cucumber seed as far as he could and started out on a run for his house. But the cucumber vine overtook him and he found a seed cucumber in his pocket.
“At that the old lady opened her eyes and mouth, but made no remark. Once more I tried her, by telling how Ward knew a lady who went for a porous plaster and the druggist told her to place it anywhere on her trunk. Not having a trunk or box in the house, she put it on her bandbox, and the next day reported that it was so powerful that it drew her pink bonnet all out of shape.
“That was more than the conscientious old saint could stand, and after supper she called me aside and told me that I ought to know that man Ward, or whoever it was, ‘was an out-and-out liar.’
“That makes me think of a colored preacher who worked here on the grounds through the week, and who loved the deep waters of theology in which he floundered daily. One evening I asked him why he did not laugh on Sunday, and when he said it was because it was ‘suthin’ frivlus,’ I told him that the Bible said God laughed.
“The old man came to the door several days after that and said, ‘Marse Linkum, I’ve been totin’ dat yar Bible saying “God larfed,” and I’ve ’cluded dat it mus’ jes’ tak’ a joke as big as der universe ter mak God larf. Dar ain’t no sech jokes roun’ dis yere White House on Sunday.’
“Well, let us get back to Ward and begin de novo. And, by the way, that was the first Latin phrase I ever heard. But I like Ward, because all his fun and all his yarns are as clean as spring water. He doesn’t insinuate or suggest approval of evil. He doesn’t ridicule true religion. He never speaks slightingly or grossly of woman. He is a one-hundred-carat man in his motives. I am often accredited with telling disgraceful barroom stories, and sometimes see them in print, but I have no time to contradict them. Perhaps people forget them soon. I hope so. I don’t know how I came by the name of a storyteller. It is not a fame I would seek. But I have tried to use as many as I could find that were good so as to cheer up people in this hard world.
“Ward said that he did not know much about education in the schools, but he had an idea the training there was more to make the child think quickly and think accurately than to memorize facts. If that were the case he thought a textbook on bright jokes would be a valuable addition to a school curriculum.
“Ward’s sharp jokes do discipline the mind. Ward told Tad last summer that Adam was snaked out of Eden, and that Goliath was surprised when David hit him because such a thing never entered his head before. Ward told Mr. Chase that his father was an artist who was true to life, for he made a scarecrow so bad that the crows brought back the corn they had stolen two years before. Ward believes that the riddles of Sampson, the fables of Æsop, the questions of Socrates, and sums in mathematics are all mind awakeners similar in effect to the discipline of real humor.”
Knowing that Lincoln had suffered a nearly fatal heart blow in his youth through the tragic death of his first love, I was interested, years after this interview with the President, to learn that there had been a startling occurrence of a very similar nature in the early life of Ward. This has been almost universally overlooked. Even his most intimate friends, including Robertson, Hingston, Setchell, Coe, Carleton, and Rider, make no mention of the tragic death of one of Ward’s earliest girl friends, Maude Myrick, then residing with relatives in Norway, Maine. The township of Norway adjoins Waterford, where Ward was born, and where he lived until he was nineteen. None of Ward’s biographers give details of his early life on the farm, and none appear even to have heard of Maude Myrick.