THE CHARACTER OF ARTEMUS WARD.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3508, 4 October 1882, Page 4

THE CHARACTER OF ARTEMUS WARD.

Ward was something besides a sparkling humorist, he was a man of character and principle; there was nothing of the adventurer —very little even of the speculator —about him. Even in the depths of comedy he was always on the side of justice and virtne, and not with the big battalions. ' I ax these questions' (about Louis Napoleon), says the showman, ' my royal duke and most noble highness and imperials because I'm anxious to know how he stands as a man. I know he's smart. He is cunnin', he is long-headed, he is grate ; but onless he is good he'll come down with a crash one of these days, and the Bonypartes will be busted up again. Bet yer life.' These comic but prophetic words were written when the late emperor was at the climax of his power, and about the time it was so much the fashion to call the Second Empire a perfect success. His devotion to his old mother was like that of a little child; her comfort and happiness were constantly uppermost in his thoughts. At one time he wanted to get her to England—alas, it would only have been to weep over his grave ! At another he thought of going home to live with her after making his fortune. His fame he valued quite as much for the pleasure it gave the old lady as for the cash it brought him in. He was the natural foe of bigotry, Peeksniffianism, and immorality of every kind. There are many hard hits at hypocrites, formalists, shams, and religious scoundrels ; but throughout the ■whole of his works you will not find one sneer at virtue or religion, and, in spite of a few broad jokes not quite in European taste, there is not one really loose or unguarded thought. 'I stain my pages,' writes ' with even mild profanity ; in the first place it is wicked, and, in the second, it is not funny.'—H. B. Haweis, in Good Words for March.