“It was an admirable surprise. I was just ready to cry; he was becoming pathetic.”
There have been hundreds of stories of Artemus Ward going the rounds of the American press during the past twenty years. A few of them are founded on facts, some of them are good, but many, I am sorry to say, are base fabrications. This is not the case, however, with the little reminder that certain residents of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, are wont to tell. Ward was advertised to deliver his famous lecture on the Mormons, in the town hall, at Pottstown, during the winter of one of the earlier years of the war. Much curiosity was excited by the announcement of his coming, and there was every reason to expect that the hall would be crowded on the evening of the lecture. A fierce snow storm raged all day, however, and the night was wild and stormy. When the lecturer was driven to the hall, he found waiting for him only five men, who had defied the storm. Advancing to the stage, and beckoning with the finger, as to a single individual, Artemus said, in an ordinary conversational tone:
“Come up closer.”
Not knowing precisely what to do, the audience of five compromised with their embarrassment by doing nothing. Artemus changed his tone to that used by one who wished to coax, and said:
“Please come up closer, and be sociable. I want to speak to you about a little matter I have thought of.”
The audience, thus being persuaded, came up a little closer, and the humorist said:
“I move that we don’t have any lecture here this evening, and I propose instead that we adjourn to the restaurant beneath and have a good time.”
Ward then put the motion, voted on it himself, declared it carried, and, to give no opportunity for an appeal from the chair, at once led the way to the restaurant. There he introduced himself to his intended auditors, and spent several hours in their company, richly compensating them for disappointment in the matter of the lecture, by the wit and humor of the stories that he told. That was how Artemus Ward lectured in Pottstown.
Glancing hurriedly through Ward’s volume of sketches, I find none more amusing than his description of
THE CENSUS.