ARTEMUS WARD The Last Speech Which Was Made by the Celebrated Humourist.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 189, 29 January 1887, Page 2

ARTEMUS WARD The Last Speech Which Was Made by the Celebrated Humourist.

I shall never forget the last time I saw Artemus Ward. We were in London, my husband and myself, and learning from a friend that our Yankee humourist was to lecture one night in Egyptian Hall, we determined to be among the hearers. I had heard him several times in America, and was anxious to see how an English audience would respond to his new world drollery, hie unequalled humour. The people came in in astraggling fashion, and occupied the front seats and those in the body of the house. I remembered the lights seemed dim, the distances dark and solemn, and the architecture dismal in the extreme. The hall was like a huge tomb built for the reception of dead-and-gone Pharaohs. On a settee not far from our party sat five gentlemen together. I fancied they were clergymen, and had come with the avowed intention of setting out the exercises in grave and dignified silence. When Artemus made his appearance it was pitiful to see the ravages disease had made in one short year. My husband turned to me with the brief sentence, " The man is dying !" and 80 he was/ With one expressive glance about the place scanning ceiling, lights, shadows and semi-darkness, the man took a step forward, and commenced in his usual halting ppeech and assumed timidity of manner. " When the Egyptians — buile this hall— the principles of acoustics were not fully understood— neither, it ia presumable, had the matter of ventilation been very extensively — ventilated. There was a smile on the faces of many, but nothing more— and yet the humour of the thing was exquisite. I could not keep my eyes from the fiva clergymen, who eat shoulder to shoulder, like so many sleek, sofVcoated seals. Not a tremor betrayed that they were conscious of muscles — their lips compressed, their brows unbending. Could it be possible that they were oblivious to the subtle vyit of his burlesque, the rare change iv his face ? Presently the moon appeared in his comical like panorama, wavered, trembled like a boat e'truck by a sudden squall, and thon hung as if suspended, limp and motionless on some lunar hook, midway between sea and sky. Artemus looked quizzingly over to these five clergymen. I think he had seen thorn all the time out of tho cornets of his eyes. "If you will excuse me, gentlemen, n he said, impressively, " I will go out and ccc to my moon. I think the moonift, a small boy, a fat boy, by the way, an English lad, who is to nightly maoage my celestial apparatus, has got cranky or gone to sleep — possibly it may be because the audience is i?o small to-night— though appreciative (here a long pause) — that he i? afraid I shall cut him short two and sixpence," and with that ho wont bobind the scenes, perhaps, poor fellow, to gain a moment' 3 respite from pain and catch his breath, for he was panting with the exertion of talking even then. There was evidontly an effort on the part of the five to keep from emiling during his speech, and while Artemus was gone the moon righted itself with a tremendous effort, and glared in such a unique fashion that first one and fiually all my five stocks and stones, as I had mentally denominated them, elapsed into audible laughter, and their white chokere began to wrinkle. Arteinus came back ; he glared at the pide seats and saw that the ice was broken. It was what he had been waiting and working for, and it seemed that the triumph gave him new lifo. From that moment those live men wero slave? to his ( humour. They laughed till they ciied, cind most certainly the brilliant showman outdid himself. Every movement, every glance provoked peala of laughter. It was as if, , having put restraint upon themselves so j long, they were eager to make up for it. I was satisfied. The u'dted son of America was at last appreciated, and though the applause came late, it did come, and Artemus Ward went home happy. Some few days after that a friend called to see the humourist, He was sick and almost speechless, yet managed to ropeif some witticisms about his sands of lite terminating on a sandbar, and spoke regret fully of never expecting to see his native land again. He never did — the next day he was dead.