A PHOTOGRAPH MADE AND LENT BY JAMES F. RYDER, TAKEN ABOUT 18S7 "ARTEMUS WARD." THE GENIAL SHOWMAN, A Belie of Artcmus Ward. The foilqvrigg letter, never before publi ,d, waa written to a menagerie agent in re D*an invitation to visit the exhibition wh was to pitch its tent within a few miles of i humorist's home. To understand the allus in the letter it should be explained that [ agent had jokingly applied for the situation doorkeeper for Artemus' proposed Mora entertainment, offering to fulfil the duties the position for nothing, and divide with teams on what he made by " knocking dov at the door. But here is the letter : ** WATKRFORD, OXFORD COUNTY, MB., 1 August 9, 1864. j " DKAR B : I was very glad to hear fi you but why the d 1, being so near me, di( you come and see me ? You would have b welcome toElsinore. " I Have finished my new book, and go to 3 York shortly to start my new pictorial entert rnent of the Mormons and things. I nope it be a go. I hope to run a few months in the tropous, but if I can't more than two weeks. to be nevertheless a success elsewhere. ' whole country ( except that portion held by misguided Southern brethren) Is before me. Y terms are quite reasonable. Heretofore my d< keepers haven't given me any of the receipts will call at Sweeney's and see you. "I am only a sweet child of nature. True, schooling Las been extensive. I have read ' gil' and the life of Professor Longworthr, b 1 am still a simple woodland gusher. 14 1 saw F in Portland. He was very v indeed, and happy with Slaymaker's circus, circus-rider Is the noblest work of God. "Send me another Billy-do. I am very b and writing this stupidly, but I am aelighte hear from you, and hop* to press your h< liacdere long In York. Thanks for the tic! This act of kindness, so nobly conceived and icately consummated, assnres me that all if base arad sordid in this world, and that the man heart, when connected with a menagert. capable of lofty impulse*, Yours truly, AMBROSE LEE In reply to R. M. Kaufl mann's appeal as to the publication of th poem below in last Saturday's issue I believ the same was printed in London Punch on th death of Charles F. Browne, a professional hn morist known as " Artemus Ward," and wa widely appreciated at the time as a tribute t the great American humorist, who died i Southampton, England, in 1SC7. It is as fo: lows, from my printed copy. It was reprinte in Putnam's Monthly of February, 1907: ARTEMUS WARD. Is he gone to a land of no laughter, This man that made mirth for us all? Proves death but a silence hereafter From the sounds that delight or appall? Once closed, have the lips no more duty, No more pleasure the exquisite ears; Has the heart done o'erflowing with beauty, As the eyes have with tears? * Nay, if aught be sure, what can be surer Than that earth's good decays not with earth And of all the heart's springs none are purer Than the springs of the fountains of mirth. He that sounds them has pierced the heart 1 hollows, The places where tears are and sleep; For the foam-flakes that dance in life's sha lows Are wrung from life's deep, v ' He came with a heart full of gladness From the glad-hearted world of the wf-st; Won our laughter, but not with mere madnos' Spake and joked with us, not in mere jest; For the man in our heart lingered after, When the merriment died from our ears. And those that were loudest in laughter Are silent in tears. RICHARD BURTON. In your issue for Jur 13, under Appeals to Readers, inquiry is mac concerning the poem " The City of the Dead. Allow me i say that it was written by mi appeared first In The Century Magazim and can now be found in my volume of vers entitled " Dumb In June," published by L< throp, Lee & Shepard of Boston. fefSsl THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. BEING REMINISCENCES OF THE LIFE ARTEMUS WARD c P AND PICTURES OF A SHOWMAN'S CAREER IN THE WESTERN WORLD. BY EDWARD P. KINGSTON^ It' Chinese Stage Soldiers. A 310. NEW ILLUSTRATED EDITION. Complete in One Volume. LONDON : JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY. {All Rights resetted.} 4 13 1* 4-4-0 i ?- OVERTURE. OOMEWHERE in the Western* States of the American Union a newspaper editor was chal- lenged to define explicitly the politics of his journal. He replied, " Up and down the Democratic plank our principles are straight as a ramrod, but we've got some ideas which creep out underneath at the sides. They creep and creep till they get their grip of the whole creation ." The divergent tendencies of that Western editor were, I am afraid, like to those which have influenced me in writing this book. My intention was to write the story of one who was the most genial of showmen. Yielding to the impulse of the moment, I have written of many other people and of many other things. " Write all that you happen to know of the life of Artemus Ward/' advised a friend. I promised to do so. " Relate all your adventures among the showmen of America," said another friend. " America has never been pictured from a showman's point of view vi OVERTURE. in any book of Trans-Atlantic travel. You have seen the greater part of the North American continent, and must surely have some quaint stories to tell and some odd incidents to describe " I replied "Yes." " Use up those note-books of yours/' suggested poor Artemus Ward on one of the last days of his life, when dying at Southampton ; " we fell in with many good things during our wanderings. That note- book was a nuisance on the road, but you should turn it to account now." My answer was " I will, by-and-by." Hence the volumes now presented to the public. They are not a biography, nor do they form a book of travel, nor a collection of anecdotes, nor a treatise on the art of being a showman. They are simply an endeavour to narrate succinctly and amusingly the principal incidents of the public career of Artemus Ward, and the adventures which befel us together ; to describe the people we met and the scenes we looked upon ; to rescue from forgetfulness a few passing jokes, and to tell over again some of the odd stories heard by the way. Should any critic across the Atlantic object that the stories are not all new ones and that some of them have been told before, my reply is, that they were told to me. If previously related to Brother Jonathan, the OVERTURE. vii Puritan Fathers, or Christopher Columbus, I cannot help it, and am far too generously disposed to grudge any one of those gentlemen the pleasure of having listened to a good thing before me. One word about my non-adherence to the rules of literary composition. I am quite well aware that I have written some chapters in the past tense and others in the present. Wherever I have done so I have written advisedly and with intention. I have changed the key to suit the character of the music. My good intent must be the apology for my transgression. Note-books and itineraries carefully kept have fur- nished me with materials. Wherever I have quoted a saying or a speech, I have done so from memoranda made shortly after its utterance. Whether from out of my garden of sweets I have culled the prettiest flowers I am not quite certain. But the bouquet- paper thanks to the publisher may help to sell the nosegay. In the belief that these pages will furnish some new matter to the reading public, and that the scenes and places described in them are not already too familiar, I venture, as a showman, to open my literary show. E. P. H. London, 1870. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGR I. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SHOWMAN I ii. ENJOYING "THE HONEYMOON," AND VISITING "THE INFERNAL REGIONS" 12 III. THE OHIO RIVER A SHOWMAN AFLOAT .... 28 IV. LOUISVILLE AMONG PANORAMAS AND MINSTRELS . 45 V. MAINE THE HOME OF THE HUMORIST .... 62 VI. CLEVELAND HOW MR. CHARLES BROWNE BECAME "ARTEMUS WARD" 79 VII. NEW YORK THE VERDICT IN THE CELLAR ... 96 VIII. THE UNITED STATES LECTURES AND THE LECTUR- ING SYSTEM Ill IX. NEW YORK " BABES IN THE WOOD " AT CLINTON HALL . 133 X. WASHINGTON AND PHILADELPHIA AN EMBALMER's WORKSHOP SIXTY MINUTES OF AFRICA IN THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE 145 XI. ACROSS THE CONTINENT A STRANGE TELEGRAM THE BABES TRANSFORMED INTO GHOSTS l6l XII. THE ATLANTIC OCEAN SHOWMEN ON THE SEA . . 171 XIII. THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA SHOWMEN IN THE TROPICS 1 82 XIV. PANAMA THE LAOCOON AT SANTA-FE DE BOGOTA . 196 XV. POKER AND EUCHRE ON THE PACIFIC .... 2o6 XVI. COFFEE-TRAYS AND CIGAR-CASES IN MEXICO THE SHOWMAN AT ACAPULCO 219 x CONTENTS. CHAP. XVII. LANDING THE SHOW IN CALIFORNIA . . . . 233 XVIII. WAKING THE ECHOES IN SAN FRANCISCO . . . 247 XIX. SAN FRANCISCO FROM A SHOWMAN'S POINT OF VIEW 263 XX. THE ECHOES WAKE AND EEPLY COMEDY AND TRAGEDY AT THE EL DORADO 277 XXI. TROTTING OUT THE BABES BESIDE THE PACIFIC . 289 XXII. A DANCE ON A FLOOR OF GOLD, AND EXPERIENCES OF CHINESE THEATRICALS 299 XXIII. THE GENIAL SHOWMAN IN STRANGE PLACES . . 316 XXIV. THE WARM-HEARTED PEOPLE OF SANTA CLARA . 332 XXV. SPIRITUALISM AND CONJURING 343 XXVI. IN THE CAPITAL OF CALIFORNIA 359 XXVII. THE SHOW IN SIGHT OF THE SIERRA . . . . 370 XXVIII. AMONG THE GOLD MINES WITH OUR " BABES " . 383 XXIX. WITH OUR FACES TOWARDS THE MORMONS . . 397 XXX. THE SHOW IN SILVER-LAND 407 XXXI. STRAIGHT TO THE " SAINTS " OF UTAH . . . 419 XXXII. SAFE IN SALT LAKE CITY 437 XXXIII. INSIDE THE MORMON HOTEL 4$O XXXIV. THE CHURCH IN THE THEATRE AND THE THEATRE IN THE CHURCH 464 XXXV. LOOKING DOWN UPON THE MORMONS .... 477 XXXVI.' PRISONERS IN SALT LAKE CITY 484 XXXVII. AMONG THE LADIES OF SALT LAKE . . . 494 XXXVIII. THE SHOW OPENS IN NEW YORK 505 XXXIX. IN LONDON THE FALL OF THE CURTAIN . . 515 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. CHAPTER I. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SHOWMAN. ANNO DOMINI 1861. Tuesday, i P.M., I was at Versailles ; three hours previously I had passed through London ; in a few hours more I expected to arrive at Delhi. " We travel very slowly on this railroad/' I ventured to remark to the gentleman seated next to me in the carriage. " It's a kind-a one-horse one/' replied my neigh- bour. " Travelling on it is about as cheerful as a Quaker meeting-house by moonlight. But Cincinnati will wait for us. It won't move farther down the Ohio because we don't get thar sooner, that's sure." " Perhaps, gentlemen, you are not aware that this is Artemus Ward's Railroad?" observed a jovial- looking passenger behind me, who had overheard our conversation. " I haven't the pleasure of being acquainted with Mr. Ward," responded the traveller on my left. " But the Ohio and Mississippi line, which jines on to us presently, was managed by General George B. McClellanj and when he looked after it, it war handled elegantly." 2 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. My curiosity was excited. In the course of ex- tensive travel through the United States I had often met with the name of " Artemus Ward" attached to articles of a peculiarly quaint and comic character, copied and re- copied in the newspapers of the North and South. The singularity of humour dis- played in these articles, the originality of the style, and the eccentric spelling which the writer used, had caused me, in common, I presume, with many thousands of others, to wish for information rela- tive to the author. Besides, the humorist appeared before the world in the character of a showman, owning some "wax figgers," or "moral wax statoots," as he described them, a "larfable little cuss" of a kangaroo, and a " zewological animal like a snaik under perfeck subjecshun." Any one connected with the " show" fraternity was at that time one whom I very much wished to know. I use the word " show" in its American accepta- tion, as comprising every class of entertainment, from opera and the poetic drama downwards. Artistes and performers, whether singers., actors, or exhibitors, were ladies and gentlemen with whom I desired to become acquainted. Hence I turned round to my fellow traveller behind me in the railway carriage, or " car/' as they term it in the States, and prosecuted inquiry. "May I ask you what ' Artemus Ward' you mean? not ' Artemus Ward' the Showman, whose name I so frequently see in the newspapers ?" "Why, certainly," answered my informant, using the mais oui form of affirmation so common in the States. " You are aware that we are travelling through Indiana? Baldinsville must be somewhere about here." 0^ THE WAY TO THE SHOWMAN. 3 "Then has Mr. Artemus Ward anything to do with the railroad ?'' I inquired. " Not that I am aware of," replied my communi- cative acquaintance. " But you have seen the para- graph in the papers, in which he describes his visit as the editor of the Baldinsville Bugle to the super- intendent of the line, to ask him for a free pass. The superintendent told him that the road could not pass him even as an editor. ( Can't it ?' said Artemus. ' No, sir, it can't/ said the official. Artemus looked him full in the eyes, and gave it him hot. ' I know it can't,' said he ; ' it goes so tarnation slow it can't pass anything.' This must be the line, and it's just what Browne would say." " Who is Browne ?" was my next question. " Oh, Browne is Artemus Ward. I know him very well." "And is he a showman? I know most of the showmen in the West, but I have not met him among them." " You may meet him this evening ; he will be in Cincinnati on business," replied my informant, evading a direct answer to my question. " Is he an old man as one would infer from some passages in his writings or is he merely assuming a character, in writing about Baldinsville, when he states that he has been in the show business twenty- two years and six months ?" There was a pause. My fellow traveller took a cake of tobacco out of his waistcoat pocket, bit off a piece, and, with a twinkle in his eyes, said " Just you hold on ; wait till you see him. I have some business with him at the Burnett House in Cincinnati to-night. I will introduce you to him if B 2 4 TEE GENIAL SHOWMAN. you like. I guess you'll find he knows more about shows than most of us do. He's smart. He keeps his eyes pretty well skinned, I can tell you. There's nothing of the woodchuck about him. Do you use tobacco ?" I declined with thanks the proffer of the cheering weed. The gentleman who " used" it seeming un- willing to favour me with any more information at that time on the subject of the eccentric showman, threw himself back in his seat, extended his arms along the mahogany framework of the cushion, and hummed a few bars of one of the then popular martial melodies. The train jogged on in the direction of Lawrence- burgh. I believe that I avail myself of the right verb to describe its motion. Trains in Indiana are not apt to glide, nor to skim the surface of the rails with unfelt celerity. In the West, the " sleepers," to which the rails are bolted, deserve some other name than the technical one accorded to them by the railway engineer. They rest on beds so roughly made as to suggest any other idea than that of sleeping. Very little care is devoted to the preparation of the sub- stratum ; and the log which bears the rail has in many instances been cut from a tree that grew but a few yards from the spot. In half the time which in England would be considered requisite for the survey and preparation of plans for a new railway, a railway of equal length is thought of, surveyed, constructed, and the " cars" are running on it in the states west of the Alleghanies. Never mind if there are no towns along the route; they will spring up by-and-by. Never mind if the carriages do get smashed-up now and then ; there is wood enough left in the States to A RAILWAY IN THE FAR WEST. 5 build tens of thousands more. Never mind if you are jolted while travelling; if you are bumped, hurtled, bruised, made to feel vindictive, and to wish the engineer of the line to be in the carriage with you, that you might have a chance of throwing him out of the window ; all will be forgotten when you arrive at the end of your journey. In the years to come that line of rail, now running through forests, swamps, new-made clearings, and untilled prairie, will have cities, villages, gardens, and corn-fields on each side will have lost all its picturesque wildness, all its uncouth crudities, all its youthful eccentricities, and will have developed into as solid, smoothly-conducted and well-behaved a railway as any in the States of that wondrous America, wherein rapidity of growth is as great a marvel as fertility of enterprise. Arriving at Lawrenceburgh, the train waited a few minutes, and then, turning off in a north-easterly direction, proceeded along the bank of the .Ohio river. At length it arrived at a swamp, over which, and over the Miami river, an affluent of the Ohio, the rails were laid on a bridge of new timber and of very suspicious fragility of construction. I remarked to the gentleman who sat on my left that the bridge did not seem strong enough for a place so dangerous, and asked him why it was so newly built and not of greater strength. " It's a good bridge enough for where it is," was his reply. " It gets washed away every year." I was not quite sure whether washing-away time had arrived, and .felt more comfortable when the Miami river was crossed, and the bridge in the rear of the train. Shortly afterwards, the conductor apprised me that we had come to Delhi, which he pronounced 6 TEE GENIAL SHOWMAN. as " Del-eye," with a strong accent on the last syllable. I looked out to ascertain what there was about the place to remind me of the ancient capital of the Great Mogul. Neither palace nor temple was visible, but in front of a whisky-shop a number of old playing- cards were strewn about the road, and I wished to go and turn them over to see if the picture of the East Indian monarch was on the back of them, as I had seen it so often in my own country. It struck me that I might thus trace the derivation of the Delhi of the Occident. But I gave up the thought when I remembered that I had left Switzerland behind me in Indiana, that Athens is in Ohio, that Glasgow and Paris are in Kentucky, and that Rome and Troy are in the State of New York. The railway terminus, or " depot" as it is termed in America, was more than a mile from the city. Omni- buses were in attendance to convey the passengers to Cincinnati. Before taking the one which suited me best, I reminded my fellow traveller of his promise to introduce me to Mr. Artemus Ward that evening, and I pledged myself to meet him at the Burnett House at the hour he appointed. Hotels in the United States have been made the theme of copious description by nearly every one who has written a book on American travel, but among the various classes of travellers who resort to them, few experience so much of their comforts and dis- comforts, or know them so well, as the itinerant show- man in the course of his nomadic, unsettled career. By him they are looked upon as among the chief objects of interest in every city which he visits. If he be a true type of the genuine American showman, he will be well informed on the several points of ex- THE BURNETT HOUSE, CINCINNATI. 7 cellencc of each of these establishments ; he will be personally known to the proprietor of each, he will be on familiar terms with the hotel clerks, and will be fully cognizant of which is the best house to stop at, in order to advertise his entertainment and to dispose of tickets for his show. Prominent among the best hotels of the United States, from a showman's point of view, let me rank the Burnett House in Cincinnati, of which Messrs. Johnson, Saunders, and Co. were proprietors. Whether they still conduct it after the lapse of seven years, I am not aware; but, at the time of which I write, they illustrated that which in America is thought to be one of the greatest proofs of human excellence they understood hotel management. When a man falls short of perfection it is a common mode of pro- nouncing judgment upon him to say that he is " a very clever fellow, but he can't keep an hotel." Were a tourist to wander into Cincinnati for the first time, and not be informed to the contrary, his first glimpse of the Burnett House might lead him to suppose it to be the City Hall, the State House, or the Government offices for the entire West. Its columned portico is approached by a broad and steep flight of stone steps ; there are terraces with stone balustrades in front of its windows, and there is a great dome surmounting its central portion, giving to it in the distance the appearance of a small edition of the Capitol at Washington. Its internal arrangements are like those of most Western hotels the large entrance hall, the counter with the hotel clerks be- hind it, and the register-book on the top of it ; the leaves of which register-book are being constantly thumbed and turned over by gentlemen who ease their troubled minds by finding comfort in lolling 8 TEE GENIAL against the counter and studying the list of names. There are advertisements of railways around the walls of the entrance-hall, and, in cold weather, a stove in the centre. Nursing the stove in winter, and lolling on the seats in summer, are the occupations of the gentlemen visitors, some of whom are boarders and others " loafers," who have no better way of employing their time. There is no porter in livery to open the door, nor any policeman on the steps to call cabs and to terrify intrusive little boys. The entrance- hall is a lounge for all who choose to avail themselves of it, an exchange for those who wish to meet on business, and an information office for those who seek intelligence, or are desirous of learning the latest news. It is a place of continuous bustle, of stirring life and considerable noise ; a place resonant with the ring of bells and reeking with the reek of tobacco. At the hour appointed I strolled into the Burnett House and looked around among the various groups for my acquaintance of the railway carriage. Presently I perceived him, seated beside a light-haired gentle- man of youthful appearance, with whom he was en- gaged in conversation. Recognising me, he beckoned me to make my way towards him, and, after first asking me for my name, with which he had not been previously furnished, introduced me to the gentleman with whom he had been conversing. The introduction was without ceremony, and in that easy off-hand manner in which one person is made acquainted with another in the United States. " Charles," said he, addressing his companion, " I met this gentleman in the cars to-day. He has read some of your writings, and wants to see the great I MEET THE GEXIAL SHOWMAtf. 9 showman of Baldinsville Artemus Ward. So I told him to come and look at you." I was bewildered. I expected to see an elderly man with a shrewd face and " busy wrinkles round his eyes/' like those of Tennyson's miller; a man of cunning look and rough exterior, who had mingled much with the world, and who, by travel and long experience of the rough-and-tumble life of a showman, had qualified himself to be the Mentor to so inexperienced a Telemachus as myself. No trace of my ideal presented itself in the gentleman to whom I was, introduced. He was apparently not more than twenty-five years old, slender in build, frank, open. and pleasant in demeanour, with ruddy cheeks, bright eyes, and a voice soft, gentle, and musical. Instead of an old showman I saw a young man, who, judging from his appearance, might have just left college. Instead of the sort of person usually found travelling with a wax- work exhibition, I met a gentleman who might have passed for a youthful member of ona of the learned professions. Feeling some doubts about my having been introduced to the right man, and half-suspecting that I was being made the victim of a hoax, I asked hesitatingly if the gentleman were really Mr. Artemus Ward. " This is my friend Mr. Charles Browne, who pleases to call himself Artemus Ward," replied my in- troducer. " Fll vouch for him, but not for his show. As for his kangaroo, I don't go anything on him." Very little time elapsed before we were on terms of chatty acquaintance. Presently Artemus Ward interrupted the conversation to inquire whether or not I was an Englishman. I replied that I was, when he io TEE GENIAL SHOWMAN. again offered to shake hands, and said, half in earnest and half in jest " I like Englishmen ; this is the hotel your Prince of Wales stopped at when he came through here last summer. By the bye, how is the Prince ? Give my compliments to him when you see him. Suppose we go down and hoist to him." "To hoist," or, to give the pronunciation more closely, " to hyst," is, in American parlance, to indulge in a drink. The bar of the Burnett House is down- stairs. Thither we adjourned, and after duly toasting the health of his Royal Highness in some very excel- lent Bourbon, the genial " showman," addressing me, said " My friend and I are going round to see the shows in Cincinnati to-night, and we mean to visit the Infernal Regions. Will you join us ?" Willingly," I replied ; " but pray what are the Infernal Regions ?" " Don't be frightened. Come and see." Thus it was that I first met Artemus Ward. It was our destiny that we should become intimate in after years. As we shook hands together for the first time, I felt that we were to know one another better, and that our first meeting was not to be our last. Among the humorists who rose to eminence during the American War, Artemus Ward was the raciest. Among the satirists of the period he was the gentlest and the most genial. I write of him as one of whom I saw much, and with whom I travelled far. We planned together many enterprises, travelled as show- THE LIFE-STORY YET TO BE TOLD. n men with the same " show/' and participated in many cdd adventures. Born in that part of New England where Nature wears her sternest and her roughest aspect, Artemus Ward lived to become known as one of the most mirthful and most tender-hearted of her children. In quiet Elm Vale Cemetery, at Waterford, in his native state of Maine, near the cottage in which he was born, and beneath the shadow of Mount Vernon, the mountain which he climbed in his boyhood between the grave of his father, who lived not long enough to know of his son's fame, and the grave of Cyrus the brother whom he loved Artemus Ward is buried. In writing the story of Artemus Ward's career, and in relating what I saw of show-life in America whilst associated with that career, I purpose to give to the public all that I know of Artemus Ward, in the order in which my knowledge of him was gained, from the day of my first meeting with him in Cincin- nati, to that later and more mournful day when with dim eyes I watched the steamer " Deutschland" glide slowly down Southampton Water, bearing amongst its freight a coffin removed from Kensal-green Cemetery and consigned to a grave beyond the Atlantic. 12 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. CHAPTER II. ENJOYING "THE HONEYMOON," AND VISITING "THE INFERNAL REGIONS.'* " "\/"OU Britishers can't show an Opera-house like JL that in your country. Every brick is made of whisky and all the mortar's pork/' So said Mr. H , of the Cincinnati Enquirer, when he first escorted me over Pike's Opera House, in Cincinnati; by which extraordinary metaphor I afterwards understood Mr. H to mean, that the edifice referred to owed its origin to the successful trade in whisky carried on by the proprietor, Mr. Samuel Naphthali Pike, and that the flourishing state of the pork-exportation business in Cincinnati generally, caused money to be plentiful and the opera-house to be patronized. Incongruous as the mixture of whisky, pork, and opera may at first appear to be, the idea of incongruity is dispelled when the facts are ascertained that greater part of the wealth of the inhabitants of Cincinnati has resulted from trading in pork and dealing in whisky; and that with the accumulation of wealth have arisen a desire for amusement and an inclination to cultivate the fine arts and the drama. At the period of which I write, Cincinnati was singular in its possession of an opera-house. In the Eastern cities there were PIKE'S OPERA HOUSE, CINCINNATI. 13 establishments much larger in dimensions, devoted chiefly to operatic representations, but, in deference to the puritanical ideas of the citizens, they were called " Academies of Music," not " Opera Houses." In so styling them, there was a distinction without a dif- ference which rendered them more acceptable to the popular taste. Except Maguire's Opera House at San Francisco, I believe that Mr. Pike's in Cincinnati had no rival by name in the United States. A very noble building was Pike's Opera House, and one of which the chief city of Ohio had every reason to be proud. It stood on Fourth-street, pre- senting a most imposing elevation and being de- cidedly the greatest ornament of the town. On the basement story was an extensive bookselling esta- blishment, the pit portion of the auditorium being considerably above the level of the street, the visitors having to ascend a flight of marble steps. Internally the decorations were worthy of any theatre in America or Europe ; the seating accommodation was superior to that of our London houses, and an air of sumptuous grandeur in all the appoint- ments caused a stranger on first entering to feel no little surprise, especially if his previous ideas of " out West" had led him to anticipate a lack of the refine- ments of civilization. Still more surprised was he likely to be on learning that no Duke of Bedford, nor Earl Dudley, nor body of shareholders, nor govern- ment subvention had been required for the erection of a structure so magnificent, but that Mr. Pike had at first traded in whisky, and then distilled whisky, in the course of which processes he had extracted number- less dollars and obtained a fine spirit of enterprise. Mr. Pike is a gentleman of musical taste and an excel- i 4 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. lent flautist. The operatic muse objected to come over the Alleghanies to visit Porkopolis, as Cincinnati is sometimes called; there being no fitting house for her re- ception. Mr. Pike resolved to build one. He expended a fair fortune in doing so ; and let it not be said that Art is without patrons in the West, when one lover of it reared on the banks of the Ohio a temple so worthy of the art he loves. In the course of his tour through the United States, the Prince of Wales accepted an invitation to a ball in the Cincinnati Opera House, and I believe that Mrs. Pike was honoured by being his partner in the first quadrille. The house exists no longer. Fire, that formidable foe of opera-houses, was no less unkind to Mr. Pike in America than it had previously been to Mr. Gye, or has been still later to Mr. Mapleson, in London. Playing the old role of the phoenix, Pike's Opera House has risen out of its ashes, but finding that it could be a phoenix it determined to use its wings, and flying eastward,* has taken up its place of rest in the city of New York, whither Mr. Pike has gone also, and where, with another distillery in full operation, I understand that he cultivates music on a basis of whisky, even as before now literature has been cultivated on a little oatmeal. I have been thus lengthy in my reference to Pike's Opera House for two reasons; one of which is that seven years ago it was the grandest place of the kind anywhere in the West, and the second reason being that it was the first theatre to which I went with Artemus Ward. A dramatic company had possession of the Opera * This building has since become the property of the well- known banker, Mr. Fisk. ENJOYING " THE HONEYMOON." 15 House, and the play of the evening was Tobin's comedy of The Honeymoon. Artemus Ward, two of his friends and myself, were courteously shown to seats in the dress-circle, with that politeness which is always shown in the United States to the " dead-head" as he is called, or the person who is passed into the theatre without being called upon to pay for admission. The play was very badly acted. The Duke Aranza of the evening was a little worse than usual. Artemus Ward masked his face with his hands, watched the action of the piece with ill-concealed laughter, and when the drop-curtain fell, said, turning to me, " I am going over to your country some day, and shall want you to introduce me to Mr. Tobin." Unused as I then was to the pleasantries of my new acquaintance, I felt puzzled, and innocently asked, " Do you mean John Tobin who wrote The Honey- moon?" " I do. He's a good and great man. I want to thank him." " John Tobin has been dead these fifty years," I replied. " Is it possible that you are not aware of this being a very old comedy ?" Artemus Ward preserved his gravity. Grasping me warmly by the hand, he continued in a well-affected voice of emotion, " I am sorry, indeed I am sorry. I wanted to see Mr. Tobin very much. Mr. Tobin has done me a great deal of good in his time ; Mr. Tobin has been very kind to me. Whenever I have wanted to see any bad acting I have always found it when The Honeymoon has been on the bills; whenever I've had to report an amateur performance or to take a young lady to the play, I have been sure to see The Honey- moon. Much honeymoon is on my brain. It oppressei i6 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. my heart, and I have hoped one day to be able to go to England just to call on Mr. Tobin to say how grateful I am, and to kick him ! " After that, my first lesson, I learned to be more guarded in my readiness to supply information to Artemus Ward. Subsequent experience taught me that he was very fond of enjoying a harmless laugh at the expense of his friends, and that his manner of joking among them frequently took the form of his joke with me in reference to the old dramatist, whose well-worn comedy is the last resource of many a travelling company in difficulties, and the bete noir of many a used-up playgoer. From Pike's Opera House we adjourned to Wood's Theatre in Vine-street, where not finding some friends whom he expected to see, and not caring to witness the performance, Artemus Ward proposed that our stay should be very brief, and that we should proceed at once on our previously agreed upon visit to the Infernal Regions. Partially following the plan adopted in Philadel- phia, Cincinnati has a similar arrangement and nomen- clature of streets. The streets running parallel with the Ohio river are named in their numerical order, and the streets crossing them at right angles mostly after the names of trees. Third-street is the street of business offices, and Fourth-street the main avenue of the town. In St. Louis and some other western cities Fourth- street is similarly honoured. In Philadelphia, Chestnut- street is the principal of the streets running down to the river, but in Cincinnati, Walnut- street takes chief rank amongst the cross thoroughfares. There are three or four places of amusement in Vine-street, while the National Theatre Plate II. AN EMIGRANT CARAVAN ON THE PLAINS. Nearly all the inhabitants of Salt Lake City have had to travel thither in emigrant trains, undergoing countless hardships on the way. Skeletons of animals and remains of broken-down vehicles serve to mark out the track. THE "NOBLE SAVAGE." On the right of this picture is a scaffold erected for an Indian grave. The corpse is placed on the top of it, out of the way of the wolves, though not sufficiently protected to prevent the vultures and other birds of prey from soon rendering it a skeleton. EN ROUTE TO THE "INFERNAL REGIONSk" 17 and the building containing the Infernal Regions are both in Sycamore-street, between the streets which are distinguished by the numerals three and four. Artemus Ward, his friends and myself, stopped for a few minutes at Mr. John Bates's National Theatre, just to call upon Mr. John Bates, whom we found seated in a grocery store under the front of his play- house, where he sold bottled whisky and brown sugar, soap, sauces, rum and raisins, together with other ex- cellent articles common to a western grocery shop. Unlike Mr. Pike, who had gone from whisky up to opera, Mr. Bates had commenced with theatricals and was coming down from the drama to the whisky trade. We wished him prosperity and passed on. Our place of destination was only a few doors lower down ; and a very dingy, unattractive place it appeared to be, so far as I could form an opinion from its ex- ternal characteristics. There were a few dirty bills posted about the entrance ; there were the ruins of a hand-organ sending forth doleful sounds inside ; there was a dingy light burning in the passage, and there appeared to be a most plentiful supply of dirt and dust in the interior, judging from the samples furnished at the very entrance. The title of " Infernal Regions" had led me to anticipate a strange place, and my first impressions of the exterior were in thorough conformity with that which I had expected. Artemus Ward play- ing the part of Virgil and I that of Dante, we boldly entered the Inferno of the city of Cincinnati. A hasty glance around the first apartment which we penetrated, and a study of one of the bills therein dis- played, were enough to inform me that we were at The Museum, and that the manager's name was Mr. W. Allen. c i8 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. A te Museum" in the United States means some- thing very different from that which we understand by the same word in Europe. There was Mr. Barnum's Museum in New York, and there is Mr. KimbalFs Museum in Boston; but neither of them had nor has any very close resemblance to the national treasure-house of the Louvre, the establishment at South Kensington, or that in Great Russell-street, Bloomsbury. A " Museum" in the American sense of the word means a place of amusement, where- in there shall be a theatre, some wax figures, a giant and a dwarf or two, a jumble of pictures, and a few live snakes. In order that there may be some excuse for the use of the word, there is in most instances a collection of stuffed birds, a few preserved animals, and a stock of oddly assorted and very dubitable curiosities ; but the mainstay of the " Museum " is the "live art," that is, the theatrical performance, the precocious mannikins, or the intellectual dogs and monkeys. Years ago there used to be in Holborn, near the top of Drury Lane, an exhibition, to which the charge for admission was two-pence or a penny. Any one who remembers the place will be able to form an idea of the exterior of the " Infernal Regions" in Cincin- nati; but nothing we ever had in London could equal the entertainment provided for the visitor to the Ohio show-shop. In the lower part of the place were broken models and stuffed pigs, rusty swords and guns said to have been picked up on the battle ground of Tippecanoe, Indian spears, leather hunting-dresses, and oddly-shaped stones. There was a thunderbolt which "had been seen to fall in Kentucky," and some frag- ments of ancient temples from the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah (!). All were foul with dust and be- HOW TO MAKE UP A MUSEUM SHOW. 19 grimed with the soot of lamps. An odour of mustincss seemed to emanate from every object, and something suggested the idea of ugly spiders being concealed in every cranny and crevice. In the apartment above, matters were in a little better condition. The stuffed birds still retained some of the original colour- ing of their plumage, and the hide of the " Horrid Alligator of the Amazon," had been fingered by visitors until its scales had become more polished than they ever had been in the slime of its native river. In a back room was a small and interesting collection of coins and medals ; ranged against a wall were a number of glass cases filled with curiosities preserved in spirits. Prominent among these were two bottles, one containing a human head, and the other a human hand. The head was that of a murderer, whose name, if I remember rightly, was " Heaver" or " Hever," and the hand was the actual right hand with which he had murdered his victim. Our guide hurried us away from the inspection of these unplea- sant objects, to go with him and see the wax- work portion of the exhibition. There is no really good wax-work collection in tne United States. Were the executors of Madame Tussaud to send over the Baker-street one just as it is, and arrange to show it a month or two in one city, and then a month or two in another, they would rapidly make a fortune. Wax- works in the American cities are about on a par with those which used to be exhibited at English fairs twenty years ago. Those in the Cincinnati Museum I presume to have been ori- ginally displayed at Knot Mill Fair, Manchester, or on Glasgow Green. At any rate, the wickerwork bodies and limbs may have seen service there at one c 2, 20 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. time ; -while the wax faces may really be of trans- atlantic manufacture, from the atelier of some Italian- American citizen. " I wish we could only get the cases open," said Artemus Ward, looking at them wistfully. "We'd take off General Washington's head, and put it on the shoulders of Queen Victoria." Whether Artemus Ward had attempted to play any practical jokes at the wax- works during one of his previous visits I know not, but the attendant, after watching us closely for some time, came up and entered into conversation. He had evidently seen our guide before. "All the same, gentlemen all the same. We are scass of anything new. General Fremont is the last ; but thar's a mistake in the figger. He's not such a whaler of a man as that ; but we had nothing else to spare." "Whose body have you used for him?" asked Artemus. " It's the Emperor of Russia's. We'd done with him, and the varmints had got into his clothes." " And how's the Queen of Sheba ? Has she had any snakes in her lately ?" continued our guide. The attendant laughed and shook his head. " Wall no, I guess not," he replied. " She's allus givin' us trouble, but she's had no snakes." Our curiosity was roused relative to the eccentri- cities of the Queen of Sheba, a dirty wax figure, dressed in very tawdry robes of coloured muslin, and adorned with a large quantity of cheap Connecticut or Massachusetts jewels. One of our party asked the man for further information. He was told that sometime back the museum contained among other MISFORTUNES OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 21 attractions some live snakes from South America. One of these snakes became missing. It was sought for in every corner of the building, but without a discovery being made of its place of concealment. In the wax-work part of the exhibition, the Queen of Sheba was represented as bending on the left knee, offering gifts of diamond rings and gold snuff-boxes to King Solomon. The attendants were annoyed at finding the gifts, on more occasions than one, not in her majesty's hand, but fallen on the floor. They picked them up and replaced them, but in no way could they account for their falling. At length, watching the figure, they noticed the body to shake first, and then the arm, the offerings to King Solomon again falling on the floor. " We were a bit skeart," said the attendant, " for she was awful nervous. I saw her shake all over as if she had the chills and fevers. That was after she dropped the royal presents. "When we'd got the people out we undressed her, and thar in her stomach, and half way up her arm, we found that cussed snake." Many a time afterwards, in rambles through the Eastern States of the Union, in crossing the plains on our journey to Salt-lake City, and during his residence in London, I asked Arteraus Ward if his idea of the wax- figure exhibition in his earlier papers had not been suggested to him by one of his previous visits to the Cincinnati Museum. He never gave me a direct answer to the question, but I strongly suspect that it was there, where we heard of the disasters to the Queen of Sheba, that he received the first thought of (( The miscellanyus moral wax statoots of celebrated piruts and murderers, ekalled by few and exceld by 22 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. none." The story of the Queen of Sheba may also have given him the notion of adding a collection of snakes to his imaginary show. The hour had arrived for the exhibition of the Infernal Regions to commence ; and the visitors began to make their way towards a narrow door leading to an equally narrow and very steep staircase. Thither our party of four proceeded. What sort of an exhi- bition we were going to see I knew not, but the approach to the place in which we were about to witness it was anything but inviting. Nor was the way of approach suggestive; up steep stairs to the infernal regions did not strike me as being the correct sort of thing. There was a discrepancy between it and the " facilis descemus Averni" of one's school-day reading, though I might have remembered that Dante, " in mezzo del cammin," climbed a steep hill, meet- ing a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf on the way, before he had the good-fortune to fall in with Virgil, and accept his escort to the world of punishment. Up the narrow, dirty, and rickety staircase we struggled with a dozen or so of other visitors, who were equally as anxious to enjoy the horrors awaiting them above. Arrived at the top of the stairs, our party found themselves to be in a small gloomy sort of room, or gallery, very insufficiently lighted. There were a few rows of seats, and accommodation alto- gether for about thirty or forty people, if tightly packed. The front of the gallery was furnished with a series of bars, extending from the floor to the ceil- ing ; and, looking between these prison-like bars, our first view of the Infernal Regions was obtained. Somewhere on the continent of Europe there is a church which contains two transparencies; one PARADISE AND PANDEMONIUM. 23 intended to represent Paradise, and the other Pande- monium. On the afternoon of my visit to that church years ago, a good priest had twenty or thirty children around him, to whom he lectured on the joys of heaven and the tortures in waiting for the sinful. When he described the future life of the good, he caused the lights to burn brightly behind the picture of Paradise ; and when he talked to his young hearers of what would be their fate if they followed a life of wickedness, he had the lights turned up behind the transparency of Pandemonium. By means of hidden machinery, flames were made to dart up and down, while figures of sinners in agony apparently writhed in the imitation fire. Had that good priest visited the city of Cincinnati, and gone to the exhibition of The Infernal Regions, he would pos- sibly have wished to barter for it his Pandemonium, and been willing to throw the Paradise into the bargain; for looking through the bars we peered down into a large, dusky, black " chamber of horrors," in which there was just light enough reflected from the dim gas-jets in the gallery to enable us to make out the obscure outlines of many weird and hideous figures. The floor of this chamber was some feet below that of the gallery in which we , were stationed. As the eye became accustomed to the gloom, we could discern that the figures on the other side of the bars were intended to represent demons, fiends, serpents, dragons, skeletons, hobgoblins, and animals of forms more fearfully fantastic than any which Mr. Hawkins has figured as inhabiting a hypercarbonized earth in pre-adamite times. The face of each figure was turned towards us, and the mouth of each dragon or 24 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. serpent was wide open. Nearer to the bars than any of the other figures was something not quite an elephant nor a hippopotamus, though its body resembled that of one of those animals ; its face was more like that of a lion, while its tail was one of those won- drous structures one might fancy in a dream after a supper of raw pork one which no comparative ana- tomist would have the hardihood to classify among the tails of things living, or that have lived. There was another monster,, with something like the body of a bull and the head of a satyr. The artist probably intended it for the Minotaur of ancient Crete. Oddest of all the figures was that of the Genius of Evil him- self, with the orthodox tail and hoof, but with horns of unnecessary length, and eyes of disproportionate magnitude. In his right hand he carried a pitchfork, while with his left hand he supported his tail, so as to expose to view its barbed extremity. The little group of visitors in the gallery seemed to be composed of two classes, the perfect strangers, and the knowing ones who had been to the exhibition before. Exclamations of terror from the strangers bore evidence to its being their first visit, while the habitues disclosed their acquaintance with the place by pointing out the various objects to those who were with them : " Thar's Old Nick ; you'll see him presently ; he's awful good." " That's the Old Sarpint ; wait a bit, he'll skear you." " I reckon you'll like the Raging Lion ; he's like all fury he is." Suddenly, and without any warning, the lights in the gallery were turned down; two or three of the THE HOME OF THE HOBGOBLINS. 25 visitors yelled with fear, the knowing ones howled to terrify the timid a little more, and the performance commenced. There was the clang of a gong, followed by a mingled sound of roars and groans. The chamber became more illumined, and it was easily to be seen that the various figures were in motion, the serpents began to crawl, each of them thrusting out a large tongue ; the skeleton commenced to glide along a railway laid down upon the floor; and, as it approached the bars of the gallery, to raise the right arm and shake the spear held in its hand. The winged demons flapped their goblin wings, radiant with tinsel and vampire-like in form ; the gentleman in black made his way towards the bars with noiseless step, thrust his pitchfork towards the audience, twisted the barb of his tail up to the height of his head and shook a claw-like hand in the faces of three of the more youthful visitors who had taken front places close against the bars, and who did not seem to be in the least afraid. " Now for the Ragin' Lion ! his dander's risin' !" exclaimed one of the youthful party, as the strange hybrid monster nearest to us began to move its eyes, lash its tail, and turn its head. Then came a loud roar and a series of shrieks and yells. With these were presently combined the din of some gongs, the discord of what sounded like two or three violoncellos each out of tune, the shaking of chains, an imitation of an Indian war-whoop and the roll of a muffled drum. Amidst all the hullaballoo the far end of the hobgoblin's home became strongly illu- mined, and the regions of fire disclosed to view by means of a bright red transparency with moving flames. 26 TEE GENIAL SHOWMAN. The audience were now supposed to be terrified to the requisite extent, and the time for instruction and edification had arrived. The figure with the horns and the tail, after once more brandishing his pitchfork, commenced addressing the audience, speaking with a very husky tone, but with a deep moral purpose. He announced himself as " Lucifer," and proceeded to inform his visitors that unless they behaved themselves properly he should have to claim them at some future time. " I shall hev to hev you," said he, an assurance which the three youths in the front replied to by endeavouring to jerk some pea-nuts through the eye-holes of the mask, a proceeding which the Spirit of Evil resented by endeavouring to strike them with his pitchfork. The Raging Lion, perceiving how things were going, moved ponderously to the assistance of his fellow fiend. Instantly the shower of pea-nuts became fierce and furious. " It's young hay then yez are,iveryone of ye," groaned the Raging Lion, using an unmistakeable brogue. " Ye don't riverince the divil yourself, and ye wont allow the ladies and gintlemen to. Ah, get out wid ye \" A handful of pea-nuts well aimed passed in between the jaws of the monster and into the mouth of the speaker inside, causing him to cough violently. Whilst the youths were laughing at the effect produced, one of them incautiously placed his arm too far within the bars. It was immediately seized by a hand thrust forth from the mouth of the Raging Lion, and while so held the youth was well cuffed by the gentleman with the tail and horns. Amidst the uproar which ensued the lights were extin- A RAGING LION. 27 guished in the lower chamber and turned up in the gallery. The show was over ; the audience rushed to the staircase. Artemus Ward stepped towards the Raging Lion, spoke a few words to it, and threw a silver coin into its mouth. From its interior came forth a voice of gratitude " Thanks, yer honour. It's the likes of ye should come ivery night to the raygions." No joyous child ever felt more intense delight in the glories of a pantomime than did Artemus Ward in witnessing this grotesque exhibition. When we had passed out of the building and were strolling up Sycamore- street, I remarked to him that I thought he liked the actors at the Infernal Regions much better than those at Pike's opera. " They feel more at home in their parts/' was his reply. " It's the best show in Cincinnati." Visiting the same museum at a later period, I was told that its early history is blended with that of Hiram Powers, the sculptor of the famous statue of " The Greek Slave." My information must be taken quantum valeat, but I was assured that while resident in Cincinnati during his younger days, Hiram Powers designed and modelled the hobgob- lins and demons in the exhibition of the Infernal Regions. 28 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. CHAPTER III. THE OHIO RIVER A SHOWMAN AFLOAT. YOUR Sunday in Cincinnati depends for the amount of enjoyment on which side you take it. Taken on the side nearest the river it is grave ; taken on the side farthest from the Ohio, it is gay. Taken one way it is English or American, taken the other way it is Continental. Travellers usually prefer a little of both. Running through the middle of the city is the White "Water Canal, familiarly designated as " the Rhine " and " over the Rhine" is the German quarter, or half of the city, with a popu- lation exceeding 60,000. On Sunday evening American Cincinnati is as demure and well-behaved as London or Boston, while Teutonic Cincinnati enjoys Sunday in true German fashion. There may by this time be some alteration in the municipal arrangements, but at the period of my last visit the laws which applied to the city proper did not affect what some people would think to be the city improper, or " over the Rhine." All places of amusement were closed on Sunday even- ing in Cincinnati of the Americans who spoke English, but amongst the citizens who spoke German the theatre was open regardless of the day being Sunday ; and the voice of song, together with the clink of MR. CONWATS SERMON. 29 lager-bier glasses, could be heard in the " Sanger Halle/' the " Arbeiter Halle," and in the hall of the " Turners." The canal which separates the nationali- ties is a poor parody on the Rhine. There are no castles on it, but there are some very fine pig-killing establishments ; nor is there any Echo of the Lorelei, but in its stead the grunt of innumerable swine, con- tinually grunting their " Morituri te salutamus" to the Caesar of the pork-butchers. Sunday followed the evening of the visit to the Museum. Early in the day I strolled through the German part of the city. Returning down Race- street I met Artemus Ward. Opposite the place where we met was a chapel, and at the suggestion of a third party we went across to it. The preacher was Mr. Moncure D. Conway. His text on that occasion was, " Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens." The sermon was wholly a political one. If I remember rightly, Mr. Conway found in Issachar a comparison for America. He pictured slavery as one of the burdens, and an imbecile administra- tion the other. Unless I am mistaken, the moral of Mr. Conway's discourse was, that the "strong ass" should throw off both burdens, and allow itself to be ridden by General Fremont. The tendency of the sermon was not in accordance with the views of poor Artemus. He left the chapel in a somewhat excited manner. Little did he think that in a very few years to come that same preacher would use him for a text, and that the same Mr. Conway would be the orator selected to speak the funeral oration in the cold chapel near the temporary grave of the humorist on the day of his burial in the cemetery at Kensal Green in England. 30 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. It is not within my power to remember on what errand Artemus Ward chanced to be in Cincinnati at the time of which I write ; I think that it was upon newspaper business, for he was not then the popular lecturer which he subsequently became. Possibly he was on a visit, for there was at least one family in that city with whom he was well acquainted, and with one member of which, at a subsequent period, his future life was likely to have had a more intimate connexion. That his engagement, whatever it was, was not one which restricted his movements was evidenced by his accepting a proposal made by two or three friends to go down the river to Louisville on the next day, or the day following. Having to visit Louisville on business, I arranged to avail myself of the same steamer. Cincinnati is in the state of Ohio, on one side of the river, and Covington and Newport are in Kentucky, on the opposite side. Seven years ago the Ohio flowed between slavery and freedom. The " Cincinnati Belle/' or the " Newport Belle/' was in waiting to ferry you from one to the other. Now you cross by means of a bridge, and the black man can come and go as he pleases. On the morning that Artemus Ward and I went on board the Major Anderson, United States mail-packet, bound for Louisville, the " Stars and Stripes" were waving from the buildings on both sides of the stream, soldiers in blue uniforms were sauntering on the levee, and the slavery question was in about as muddy a condition as the waters of the river on which we floated. To a stranger fresh from Europe, an American river steamer is a curiosity: the shape of the boat, the STEAMING ON THE OHIO. 31 accommodation met with on board the whole economy of the management, are unlike anything to which the Englishman is accustomed on the Thames or the Mersey. The Major Anderson was not one of the most magnificent boats of her class, but she was a very fair specimen of the vessels on the Ohio. At the clerk's office on board I paid two dollars and a half for my fare to Louisville, in return for which the clerk handed me the key of my cabin, with a long stick attached to it, to prevent its being lost. In the cabin was the following " notice to passengers." I quote it because there are some points about it which render it worthy of imitation : " NOTICE TO PASSENGERS. " Life preservers will be found hanging in the rooms, or under the head of each bed; they are adjusted similar to putting on a jacket or a waistcoat, fastening the straps across the breast. The life- boat, Sec., will be found on the hurricane- deck. The doors and blinds can be lifted off the hinges, and make good life-preservers ; also the cotton mattresses." The saloon of the steamer was long, the view from stem to stern being almost uninterrupted ; the decora- tions were white and gold. At the stern end there was a piano, and comfortable seats for the lady pas- sengers : while at the forward extremity of the saloon were the clerk's office, a bar for the accommodation of the thirsty, and a stove with seats around it for those who wished to chat and to smoke. My new friends and I ascended to the hurricane-deck, where we could watch the busy scene at the levee before starting. There were steamboats for Maysville, 32 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. Portsmouth, Ironton, Ashland, Pittsburgh, Marietta, and Gallipolis. When the steamer glided off, we first passed a suburb of factories, and then between ranges of hills cultivated as vineyards to their very summits. The banks of the Ohio, and those of its tributary, the " Singing Sciota," are famous for the growth of the grape. Chief among the wines of the locality is the celebrated " Catawba/" of which Longfellow sings : " Very good in its way Is the Verzenay Or the Sillery soft and creamy ; But Catawba wine Has a taste more divine, More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy." " Sparkling Catawba" has a muscatel flavour, with a dash of bitter intermixed. Who but he who has travelled in America during the hot months of the year knows anything of the glories of a " Catawba Cocktail/'' made as it is at the bar of the Tremont House, the Revere, or Parker House, in Boston? Flavour, fragrance, and beauty are all united in that delicious draught. Who but an educationally qualified American " bar-tender" knows how to com- pound the appetizing, odoriferous, amethyst-coloured nectar? Who else but he would understand the precise number of drops of bitter to add to the catawba, the right mode of using the ice, how to float the freshly-gathered strawberry on the surface, and how properly to " frost" the rim of the glass with pulverized sugar, so that sweetness should precede amaritude, and perfume be blended with brilliancy? On two other continents besides that of America have I tasted American drinks made by quasi American barmen; but their compounds, compared with those CATAWBA COCKTAIL. 33 mixed by the true American artist on his own soil, were as different in effect as Verdi's music played by Mr. Costa's band, and Verdi's music on a barrel-organ, with a tamed monkey turning the handle. We "took our cocktail" on board the Major Anderson, and drank in Catawba our morning draught to the health of Mr. Nicholas Longworth, who is or was the Perrier, Jouet, Moet, Chandon, and Veuve Clicquot of Cincinnati all comprised in one individual. One o'clock was the dinner-hour. A stimulus for the appetite was taken by most of the pas- sengers before sitting down to the early meal. Over the bar was a portrait of Major Anderson, of Fort Sumpter fame. Enclosed between glass was a small piece of bunting cut from the flag which had waved over the fort ; and flanking it on each side were portraits of General Lyon and General Franz Siegel. Below this was a print of that celebrated character, " The Arkansas Travel- ler," representing him as sitting fiddling in front of a wretched cottage, wearing an opossum-skin cap with the tail hanging down behind. Just inside the cottage door was Mrs. Arkansas Traveller smoking a pipe, while a traveller on horseback was vainly endeavour- ing to extract from the fiddler plain directions for finding the road to Napoleon, or to some other place in that cheerful State of Arkansas, where the roads are as eccentric as the people, and the paths as devious as the ways of the inhabitants. The pictures in front of the bar were typical of the passengers who were taking their morning drinks and chatting on the events of the day. Out of a group of three, two of them were Arkansas men and the third D 34 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. a Missourian. The straight hair and the sallow com- plexion, the lean body and the long arms, were those of the semi-civilized class of men who act as buffers to the engine of civilization where it comes in contact with the dead wall behind which the Indian skulks and the wilderness extends. Side by side with these gentlemen of the backwood and the prairie were a group of military personages in blue uniforms, going down to join the Federal army in Kentucky. One of them was a loud- speaking captain, who criticised in unmeasured terms of reprobation the conduct of his superior officer. After fully expressing his mind on that subject, he devoted his energies to abusing General Scott, who had just left for England. " Anyhow you can fix it, he's a slow old fool/' was the complimentary remark of this newly-fledged captain referring to the famous old general. " His policy was always to have his men chawed up chawed up for nothin'. It's jest what he did at Lundy's Lane years ago. Now, if you call chawin' up fighting I ain't that way of thinkin'." The opinions of the out-spoken little captain were not very favourably received by two roughly-bearded men, who were each addressed as " doctor," and who in their turn addressed the barkeeper as " doctor" also, when they requested him to mix them another cocktail. In the midst of his denunciations, the captain was interrupted by an impudent Jewish-looking youth, whose age could not be more than sixteen, but whose expressive face seemed to notify that he had already laid in the whole stock of villany required for the next twenty years of his life. " Jine me in a game of seven-up, Cap ?" The TAKING "A SCINTILLATION." 35 captain declined the invitation, and the youthful gamester applied to the two doctors. They also de- clining, he solicited Artemus Ward and myself. Again disappointed, he addressed himself to the Missourian. The offer was at once accepted, and as the youth sate down to play, the handle of a bowie-knife peeped out from under his jacket. Artemus Ward and his friends were quietly watching the sharp play of the Missourian and the youth, when a gentleman of very pleasing address stepped up, and addressing Artemus as " Charley/' politely asked him to take " a scintillation," an invi- tation which was afterwards as politely extended to our little party. The phrase was a new one to me, but in the course of the day I discovered that it was the favourite euphemism of the affable gentleman for a small quantity of whisky. Not that he drank at all himself. A cigarette seemed to be his own chief en- joyment, but he was ever ready to offer " a scintilla- tion" to any one to whom he was introduced. In the course of a brief conversation I ascertained that he was agent for a show, and that he was going down to Louisville to survey the capabilities of that city as a field for money-making. " Are you still in the Crimea, and does my friend Lord Raglan hold on to his gallant steed as well as usual ?" inquired Artemus Ward in an affected tone of solicitude. The question startled me, for the date of the year was 1861, and I had been among the spectators a few years previously when the funeral procession of Lord Raglan passed through Bristol. " The Crimea came to an end in Canada ; Lord Raglan is Major Anderson now," was the enigmatical D 2 36 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. reply. " Still the same old horse, though. Goes over the field of battle at night just the same. The professor understands his business. It's a big show a very big show. Gentlemen, wont you take a scin- tillation?" Accustomed as I was to shows of various kinds, I felt puzzled about this particular one. Artemus Ward noticed my perplexity, was amused at my inability to understand the conversation, and requested the " Colonel/' as he called the agent, to explain to me the merits of his particular show. We adjourned to the hurricane-deck for the second time before dinner; and as the steamer glided down the Ohio, with Indiana on our right and Kentucky on our left, the " Colonel" described his show. Being a man of some education, he spoke without any very marked peculiarity of accent, and being aware that two at least of our party were acquainted with show- life, he conversed without reticence. Ours is a Theatre of Arts," said he. " There's Thiodon's and there's ours. Thiodon is in the Canadas now, with the Holy Sepulchre and the Shipwreck. His is a very good show, but ours can knock spots out of it. It wants life. Ours is bright and nothing but animation. Our machinery is perfect, and we always light up well. Light's the thing. Gas if you can get it. If not, spend your dollars on camphine, and don't be afraid. Audiences like lights high and music loud. We had nothing but the musical glasses first j now we have a self-acting organ with cymbals in it. The boys like the cymbals. Here's our programme Panorama of Europe to begin with. Panorama not too large, but A No. i. Illumination of St. Peter's at Rome to finish off Part I. Then a little min- PANORAMIC ART. 37 strelsy; not too much. Then the Grand Pictorial and Mechanical Animated and Moving Representation of the Taking of Fort Sumter. That used to be the War in the Crimea and the Siege of Sebastopol. The Crimea got played out, and we turned it into Fort Sumter and Charleston Harbour. Ours are all cut figures. The Russians did not want much painting to turn them into Secessionists, and we had only to paint out the red-coats of the British and colour them in blue to make the Federals. Sebastopol stood a little too high on the rocks for the city of Charleston, but we have painted the rocks down. We turned Bala- clava into Castle Pinckney, and we had room enough in the Black Sea to slip in a very nice Fort Sumter. The same holes which did for us to puff the smoke through, in bombarding the Malakoff, do for us in firing at Sumter, and Sumter had to have a few holes made for it. All fits in and costs no trouble. We put the licks in. We did it ourselves. There was a night scene in the Crimea with a horse to move, and Lord Raglan to go out on it, to look at the dead on the field of battle. Horses are all alike in pictures. Lord Raglan makes a good Major Anderson ; but, as no one was killed at Fort Sumter, all we can do is to suppose the Major to be surveying the ruins from James's Island before going on board the steamer for New York. Our exhibition is particularly well suited for schools. Moral, instructive, and cheap that's what schools want. In making my arrangements ahead I call upon the schools and contract with them. Five cents each in New England. No getting any more there; ten or fifteen cents anywhere else." As nearly as I can remember, I have quoted the very words in which the " Colonel" described his show. 38 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. The last time that I endeavoured to remember and to quote them was when the Mr. Thiodon referred to volunteered his services, and came from the Crystal Palace to assist poor Artemus in fitting np the pano- rama of the Mormons at the Egyptian Hall. The sound of a gong announced the arrival of dinner-time on board the Major Anderson. To any one who has never travelled except in England, the ceremony of taking dinner on board an American river steamer is peculiar. When we descended to the saloon from the hurricane deck we found the majority of the male passengers standing up against the doors of the state-rooms, or holding on to chairs, waiting for the customary signals. The table extended down the saloon, the stern end of it being assigned to the ladies, and the fore-part to the single gentlemen. A small bell was rung, and the ladies at once proceeded to take their seats, those who had cavaliers being escorted by them in the usual manner. Until all the ladies were seated the gentlemen at the lower table remained standing. Then a gong sounded not a bell and plump went all the gentlemen at once into their chairs with a rush. Piled up in huge dishes on the table were the several kinds of meat provided, already carved and cut into slices. Americans are proverbial for eating rapidly, and on river steamers in the West they eat more rapidly than they do any- where else. In twenty minutes from the time of commencement the ceremony of dining was completed. Supper, as it was called, took place at six o'clock. It was conducted in like manner, but with even more rapidity. After supper the company broke up into small parties ; the ladies occupying the after-part of the saloon, to play the piano, read, and flirt, the A ROMANTIC YOUNG LADY. 39 majority of the male passengers selecting tables nearer the bar to indulge in one or other of those never- failing sources of solace to the western traveller the games of euchre, poker, and seven- up. Artemus Ward was not a card-player. Indeed I very much doubt if he knew at any time during his life how to play the simplest game. His friends pro- posed that we should amuse ourselves with euchre. Artemus turned away from them with a look of pity, and sought the society of the ladies. Amongst the fairer portion of the passengers was a very retiring, quiet young lady, who wore spectacles, and who ap- peared to have the manners, air, and bearing of one whose occupation in life was to impart her knowledge to others in some college or seminary. That at least was the guess which Artemus and I had made about her. We had noticed her during the afternoon busily engaged in reading About' s story of "Le Roi des Montagues." As soon as supper was over she resumed her reading, cutting the leaves of the book with a pocket paper-knife as she read on. By what means my friend contrived an introduction I am not aware ; but I found him in conversation with her when I went to request his company to smoke a cigar with me and the two military doctors. " Excuse me," said Artemus. " This lady was asking me if I read Trench. It is a serious question, and I was reflecting whether I do." The lady seemed to be a little surprised, and ex- plained to me that she had simply asked if my friend knew the French language, as she wished to recom- mend to him the story she herself had been reading during the afternoon. " It is a story about brigands in Greece," said she ; 40 TEE GENIAL SHOWMAN. " and it is so harmingly picturesque that I can almost fancy myself to be in that classic land. As I read, the blue skies of Greece seem to be over my head, and the ^Egean Sea to be sparkling in the glorious sunlight \" Then followed a question from Artemus, which I quote as literally as I can remember it " Pardon me, madame, but do you think that glo- rious sunlight in Greece is constitutional that is to say, if early be the dream of youth whenever they are so and you know, I presume, that George Washington when young never told a lie that is, Greece in the blue skies, I mean. You understand me, of course ?" Instead of understanding, the lady appeared to be utterly bewildered. At first she seemed to doubt whether she had heard distinctly. Then the expres- sion of her face indicated that she had a suspicion of her not having paid sufficient attention, so as to en- able her to comprehend the interrogatory. " Do I understand you to say that George Washing- ton went to Greece in his youth ?" she asked. " I scarcely think that I perfectly understood you/' Artemus Ward maintained his gravity and pro- ceeded to explain. " I was about to remark/' said he, " that so far as Greece is concerned, he was more so/' " More so of what V asked the lady, still more perplexed. " More so with regard to it viewed morally. Be- cause the Jj]gean is a sea a blue sea, which might if not under those circumstances in parallel in- stances very truthfully though ; but before breakfast always before the morning meal. You agree with me, I hope ?'*' And Artemus smiled and bowed politely. SNAKES IN THE BOOTS. 41 The lady closed her book, laid it on the table, and raising her spectacles so as to enable her to see better, regarded Artemus with amazement. The ladies and gentlemen around who had overheard the con- versation looked at the speaker with equal astonish- ment. Artemus shook his head mournfully, and in a deploring tone of voice observed, " Blue Greeks blue ^Egean brigands, dead before their breakfast !" " Mercy me \" cried the lady. " The poor fellow is out of his mind. Has he no friends with him ? He is much to be pitied/' " It is nothing, madam," replied one of our party ; " nothing, I assure you. He usually wanders in this way when he has snakes in his boots." " Snakes in his boots ! And has he got them now? cried the lady, rising quickly, and recoiling from the man whom she had just been regarding with tender pity. " He has, madam. He's apt to see them now and then, but " An outcry of terror from the sympathetic lady led to a scene of confusion, in the midst of which the gentlemen passengers made their way to the forepart of the saloon, while some of the ladies took refuge in their state rooms. At that time I was not better informed than the lady I have referred to, as to the meaning of the phrase, " Snakes in his boots." On inquiry I found it to be the western idiom for delirium tremens, and it was explained to me as a curious physiological fact that the hard drinkers of the south and south- western states, are apt to imagine that their boots are full of snakes when they themselves are suffering 43 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. from the mental hallucination produced by excessive intemperance. The incoherency of speech and strange behaviour of my fellow-passenger had not, of course, resulted from any such cause, but was merely a humorous freak on his part ; a specimen of a peculiar descrip- tion of fun in which he was very fond of indulging at a subsequent period of his career. At the time of which I am writing he was a stranger to me. Being unaccustomed to any such style of joking I was as much bewildered with his rambling remarks on the Greek brigands, as appeared to be the lady to whom he addressed them. In later years, during summer months spent at his home at Maine, in company with his friend Mr. Setchell, it was a great source of amusement for him to seek out some of the stolid, half-witted towns- folk and befool them in the same manner. Mr. Setchell and he would maintain a long conversation together in which there would be no coherency, nor relevancy of subject between any two sen- tences. If by so conversing the agricultural mind could be thoroughly confused, and the country bumpkin be made to express his opinion that the two conversationalists were a pair of crazy idiots, the end of the joke was gained, and being gained was thoroughly enjoyed. Before we arrived at Louisville, the lady who had evinced so much enthusiasm about Greece and so much astonishment at the conversation of Artemus Ward, was duly informed of the perfect sanity of the gentleman with whom she had been talking. I had reason to think that she fully accorded her forgiveness for having been made a participant in the jest, for I A STORMY EVENING. 43 noticed her conversing very pleasantly with my friend, and not manifesting the least uneasiness about the proximity of the boots which had been said to be filled with unpleasant reptiles. The agent for the Theatre of Arts, the captain, the two doctors, and myself, sought seats around the stove, beguiling the time with anecdote and jest. We did not expect to arrive at Louisville till about midnight. So inclement had the evening become that none of us seemed anxious to leave the warm and comfortable saloon of the steamer to encounter darkness, rain and wind, by promenading on the hurricane deck. Each of us volunteered to tell a story. The stormy evening suggested the topic of most of the tales, and by far the best one was told by one of the passengers who had hitherto amused himself by playing poker. Its excellence consist- ing in the gravity with which it was related, and in its being illustrative of a quality of humour more keenly appreciated by Americans than by Europeans. "I used to reside at Appalachicola in Florida," said the teller of the tale. " While I was located there I kept a little yacht of my own, which I had built for me at Portsmouth in New Hampshire. She was a sweet beauty of a craft, and I used to go out in her considerable ; sometimes taking a trip to Cedar Keys and sometimes rounding Cape St. Bias, and going to St. Andrews. Down there in the Gulf of Mexico we got awful storms. When it thunders the heavens are as mad as all wrath, and when it lightens the electric fluid is something wonderful to see. The little puflf of wind and rain we have to-night don't bear talking about in comparison. Early in the fall, the weather being confoundedly hot and sultry, I took a 44 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. trip in my yacht round to St. Joseph, and I was on my homeward voyage when there came a dead calm. I had only two men with me to sail the yacht, and as the wind fell and the sky darkened away to the sou' west they began to get scared, wishing themselves safely round the cape. I knew we were to have a thunder-storm, and I reckoned upon our having it pretty smart. When it came it was a caution. Such thunder, such lightning, and such electricity of the heavens I had never seen before. I saw a great thunderbolt all one blaze of fire go plump into the water like a cannon-ball, and presently as I was standing looking on, the lightning struck my yacht and almost blinded me. I felt as if I had a flutter- wheel in my head, and I could feel the electric fluid running all through me like streams of hot water. My men helped me down into the cabin, and there I sate for some time, feeling the lightning trickle, trickle, trickle through my bones. When I got better and could stand up I found my feet quite burdensome to me, and my boots swelling out with something which felt like warm oil. I got my men to pull them boots off for me, and I reckon there was close on to a quart of electric fluid in each boot 1" " How did you know it was electric fluid ?" asked the bar- keeper, who had been listening to the veracious story-teller. " Know it ? Wall, I reckon there wasn't much trouble in knowing it. We poured it into the sea, and it lighted up the Gulf of Mexico for miles around." While we were laughing at the manner in which the narrator of the story confirmed the truth of his assertion, the bell rang to warn us that we were in sight of Louisville. TEE GALT HOUSE, LOUISVILLE. 45 CHAPTER IV. LOUISVILLE AMONG PANORAMAS AND MINSTRELS. TV^ENTUCKY had experienced very little of the -L\- excitement caused by the war of the Great Rebellion at the time when Artemus Ward and I chanced to visit Louisville ; but regiment after regi- ment was daily passing through the city en route for the southern part of the State. Buckner was at Bowling Green, and Zollicoffer at Cumberland Gap. Soldiers from Indiana, Ohio, and Minnesota, most of them tall, gawky, and half-drilled recruits, were assembled in groups upon the levee ; and General Buell had just superseded Sherman in command of the district. The hotel to which we went was the Gait House ; the place at which to obtain the best accommodation in the city. The charge for board and lodging was two dollars and a half a day. Having to do with an entertainment about to visit Louisville, I put in my claim to the privilege of being treated with that amount of leniency with regard to charge always accorded to showmen in the United States. Hamlet's instructions to see that " the players are well be- stowed," is invariably attended to by the hotel clerks across the Atlantic. I stated who I was, registered my name in the book, and was politely asked 46 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. to " take a drink." Having come through the wind and rain, I accepted the invitation. Late as it was in the evening, and though Louisville was then under martial law, the bar-room of the Gait House was thronged with customers. More than half of them were soldiers attired in the blue uniform of the Federal army. Most of them were young men, and none of them, I presume, had seen anything of the stern realities of actual warfare. To them fighting seemed to be a matter of no more importance than a game of base-ball would be to an American, or a cricket-match to an Englishman. They were soldiers fresh from home; their gilt adornments bedazzled them, and where they might have seen thistles they saw but roses ; their swords had been buckled to their sides by fair hands, which they had pressed only a few days previously ; and the parting words of parents, brothers, and sisters still sounded in their ears like the echoes of soul-inspiriting music. That there could be anything in store for them but victory, anything in waiting for them but promotion, laurels, another night at the Gait House on their way home, and a speedy return to the loved ones they had left, scarcely seemed to oppress the minds of any one of them. The South was to be crushed at once, and they had only to go and crush it. The " star-spangled banner" was to be sung in every city of " Secessia," from the Cumberland River to the Florida Reefs, and they were to go and sing it. The young soldiers were mostly recruits from the North Western States; fine, stalwart men, who had been accustomed to the use of the axe in the backwoods, and who felt no more doubt about clearing away their enemies on the fields AMERICAN SOLDIERS. 47 of Alabama or Tennessee, than they had of their ability to hew down the forests of Michigan or Min- nesota. They were all colonels, captains, or lieutenants, those young men in front of the bar. Nor was it derogatory to their ideas of military etiquette to loll about, smoke their cigars and drink their whisky to- gether in a bar open to all comers. Unacquainted as I then was with the military customs of the Western World, the free-and-easy manners of these youthful officers was matter for surprise and study. I was surveying the scene with great interest, when there entered the bar-room a gentleman whose coming seemed to be regarded by the soldiers with unusual satisfaction. He wore a common black coat, such as we wear in England for morning dress, and a pair of black trousers. On his head was a cocked hat, with feathers in it, having on one side a gilt shield ornamented with the stars and stripes. He was stout in build ; and from his ruddiness of" colour and other characteristics might have been mistaken for an Englishman. '' Glad to see you, General. Take a drink with us; some very good Bourbon. Hurrah for the old flag !' The General acknowledged the compliments paid him, and "took a drink." On inquiry, I found that he was General Buell, the new commander of the district. That he should accept a glass of whisky from his young subordinates appeared to be regarded as in no way improper. Fighting was near at hand, but festivity was the order of the night. To add to the amusements, there came into the bar-room a negro, answering in 4 8 TEE GENIAL SHOWMAN. description to that " tall, broad-shouldered, impudent black fellow" whom Addison, in the last volume of the Spectator, causes to describe the " Widow-club." He carried with him a thick stick, and without being at all intoxicated, offered to allow any one present, on payment of the small sum of ten cents, to strike him on the head with the stick as hard as they might please. I was told that he made money for himself and his master also by going round the city and sub- mitting to be struck on the head by any one who would pay first and strike afterwards. That the cranium of the negro is thicker and harder than that of other men is, I believe, an admitted fact ; but no Irishmen at Donny brook Fair ever enjoyed the touch of a shillelah on the top of his head so much as this Louisville negro, who seemed to enter into the sport of being battered. No one in the bar-room being willing to strike him, he tried a few hard blows on himself, making no feint in the wielding of the weapon ; then with a smiling expression, as though he had done himself much good, he made a collection amongst the audience and spent a part of it in whisky. Since that exhibition I have fully comprehended the difficulty of educating the negro. To prepare the way for an entertainment about to take place in Louisville was, as I have stated, the purport of my visit. Artemus Ward was then more of a " showman" in theory than in practice ; and when in the morning I prepared to go out to arrange with the music-sellers, call upon the editors, give orders to the bill-posters, and confer with the city officials, he met me, and we started on the expedition together. A PRAIRIE ON FIRE. Plate III. Artemus Ward once had an opportunity of seeing part of a prairie on fire. The grandeur of the scene made a deep impression upon him, and he frequently afterwards alluded to it in conversation. *iP* * TEE FATE OF PANORAMAS. 49 The first place to visit was the hall in which the entertainment was to be given. It was called the Masonic Temple. The accommodation was for about a thousand people, and the rent seventy- five dollars a week including the gas. Like most of the halls of the United States, it contained a stage and proscenium ; but the latter was of the most extraordinary description, resembling an organ front of Gothic design, painted very vilely blue. Coming out from the hall we noticed a number of heavy boxes, and inquired what they were. " Panoramas \" answered Mr. Matthews, the hall- keeper, or " janitor," as they call such an official in America. " There's ' The Holy Land/ ' The Sights of Paris/ and t Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress/ and ' The Drunkard's Career.' They are all there for rent. Panoramas generally get stuck here, and the owners go dead broke. You can have 'The Holy Land' very cheap if you want to buy it ; but the gentleman who owns ' Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress' has gone down to Cumberland to trade whisky to the army. He'll be back with some chips." " And of course he will redeem his panorama ?" I suggested, knowing that by "chips" Mr. Matthews intended to imply money. Mr. Matthews thought he would, adding, thoughtfully, " He has a fancy for the picture, and always cried to the school- children when he lectured on it. His liking to it, I reckon, comes from the face of Christian being painted all the way through a portrait of himself. That's awful stuff of whisky he's taken down to the army sudden poison, I should think ; but I hope he'll sell it and clear out his panorama." " A lesson for me never to have a panorama," re- E 5 o THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. marked Artemus Ward as we passed out of the hall. Three years after that he had one painted for him in the city of New York. Opposite the Masonic Temple lived Mr. Richard Moore, the bill-poster. In the order of business it was requisite to call upon him next. We found him in a small shop, where he retailed butter, eggs, and poultry. As I entered he was engaged selling squir- rels to a lady ; not living ones, but squirrels skinned ready for cooking. There was a chestful of them in the shop. " Them squarrels is cheap at a dollar for six/' said he, addressing the lady. So I thought, reflecting on the sensation Mr. Moore could cause in Leadenhall -market by taking over a cargo of them. I introduced myself, and requested to know how many bills of different sizes he could put up for me, how soon he would do them, and what contract he would make with regard to charge. His answers were satisfactory on all the three points of my inquiry, but he hesitated as I was about to leave, and in an anxious manner said " Did I understand your show to be a panorama ?" I replied that it was not, and fully explained its characteristics. Mr. Moore's face brightened, as he replied " Them bills shall go out at onst, gentlemen. I can see my money. But there's no use my leaving my butter business to go fooling after pano- ramas. Circus- work is what I like ; but we can't expect many more circuses through here now we've gone to fightin'. War is against circuses ; thar's the evil of it." Leaving Mr. Moore to his reflections on the wicked- ness of war in general, we proceeded on our way. The TAKING OUT A LICENCE. 51 hall having been arranged for, and the bill-poster duly secured, the next thing requiring attention was to see the mayor and obtain the licence; for, in the United States, every travelling entertainment has to take out a separate licence in each town it may visit. In going to see the mayor, it is as well to put a few free admission tickets into your pocket, that you may make his worship a present of some of them, and also extend a similar invitation to the aldermen. In many towns, especially where the aldermen have large fami- lies, these free admissions, or " dead-heads," as they are called, will obviate the payment of any money for the licence. Under any circumstances I believe that it is good policy to " dead-head" the mayor, the aldermen, and the city- clerk. The newspapers of course have their prescriptive right to be " dead-headed." Then it is not bad policy to " dead-head" the chief clerk at the telegraph- office, that he, in return, may " dead-head" any telegram you may have to send ; and there is wisdom in " dead- heading" the post-master ; for the post-master has boxes in which he places the letters of the townsfolk. In those boxes he can place the programme of your concert, or the circular of your lecture. He can aid you : he has a small family, and he talks through the little window to the ladies and gentlemen who come to fetch their letters. He may chance to talk about you, therefore " dead-head" him. Kelative to the subject of obtaining a licence for an entertainment, I remember being in Lancaster, Penn- sylvania. My business was to arrange for some amusements to take place in Fulton Hall. I sought out the bill-poster and accompanied him round the E a * 52 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. town, to see where there were any fitting places for the display of bills. He pointed out many, and urged the necessity of my giving him the bills at once. I told him that they were at the railway station, and that he should have them after I had obtained the licence. He assured me that the licence was " all right/' and that I need not trouble about it. I instanced to him the fact that, at a neighbouring town, the giver of a concert had been heavily fined some few weeks previously for allowing his concert to take place without having first applied for the licence. The bill-poster smiled, and assured me that I had nothing to fear in Lancaster. He went with me to the station. The bills were duly handed over to him, to be used for placarding the town. " Now," said I, " be good enough to show me the way to the mayor/' " I am the mayor \" was his reply. Another illus- tration of Lord Houghton's often quoted line, that " A man's best things are nearest him." There were two newspapers in Louisville the Louisville Journal and the Louisville Democrat. The Journal was edited by the celebrated Mr. George D. Prentice, an editor whose humorous paragraphs, pithy remarks, and trenchant sarcasms long ago won for him high renown in the literature of American jour- nalism, and who was a celebrity worth travelling into Kentucky to see. Unfortunately he was not to be seen at the period of my visit. Business therefore had to be transacted with Colonel Wallace, the " local editor/' an obliging, courteous, and shrewd member of the press, who listened attentively to the request I NEWSPAPER NOTICES. 53 had to make, readily comprehended the character of the entertainment, and undertook to herald it into public notice in a manner befitting the Louisville Journal. I offered to pay for the insertion of a " puff preliminary/' but the offer was promptly declined. The Colonel had no objection to come out, stroll, and have a chat ; and accompanied by him we went to the Medical College, where prisoners were then confined for political offences. On the way we met an ac- quaintance who was in a great hurry. " I'm. off to Paris," said he ; " it's no use hanging about here. I was going to California. But quinine is better than gold now. If I can only ship over a cargo of quinine, and send it to where I want it to go, Fm a made man." We left him hurrying off to Paris, and the Colonel explained to us that quinine " down South" was in great request, and likely to be still more scarce. He had some Memphis and Nashville papers in his pocket. Taking them out, he pointed to the number of advertisements relative to the drug which our street-acquaintance was going over to Paris to import. Later in the day I called at the Democrat office, and offered five dollars for a puff which I wished to be inserted. Messrs. Hughes and Harney not only accepted it, but volunteered to treat me with whisky in return for my fair dealing. As a rule, out West, I always found the democratic editors to be better patrons of whisky than the republican ones. There is a vein of whisky running through Western de- mocracy, as characteristic of the genial democrat as the " blue blood" is of the Vere de Veres of aris- tocracy. We dined at the Gait House, partaking of a very 54 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. excellent dinner, and meeting many officers of the Union army who afterwards won distinction on the field of battle. Judging from the conversation, the ladies were more warlike in their disposition than the men; but those nearest me at the table were more strongly in favour of the Secessionists than of the Federalists. As an indication of their political feeling they wore the colours of the South in ribbons around the neck, just as they flaunted them in the streets by means of dyed feathers stuck in their little jaunty hats. For personal beauty the ladies of Louisville are deserving of especial notice. The Ken- tucky belle has a freshness of colour and a roundness of form not so general among her fair sisters in other States of the Union. These characteristics are the result, I believe, of much out-door exercise. To be able to ride, and even to shoot, are not unusual ac- complishments of a Kentuckian fair one. A young lady of the same age in Massachusetts would prefer to be able to read Virgil, and to stand an examination in physiological anatomy. Louisville is not a city of any great architectural pretensions, nor has it the business life and " go" in it which characterize most of the large cities of the West. It is built on the Ohio, and is frequently de- signated " the Falls City," on account of the falls of the river being about two miles down the stream. I strolled to the levee to look at the steamboats, ranged in a row, the greater number of which were said to be taken up by the Government for the conveyance of troops. There were the Argonaut and the Shenango for Pittsburgh, the Trio and the W. W. Crawford for Henderson, the Dove for the Kentucky River, and the Sir William Wallace for I know not where; but the SIR WILLIAM WALLACE IN KENTUCKY. 55 name of the great Scotchman who gained the victory at Cambuskenneth and lost the field at Falkirk, painted on a steamboat floating on the muddy waters of the Ohio, seemed to be a little out of place. To a Scotchman's mind it might possibly have been some slight compensation for the murder which the first Edward wrought. Doubtless the boat was owned by an Americanized Scotchman. Nationalities were plenteously represented in Louis- ville. Names of Scotch and Irish extraction figured over the whisky-shops, and Jew clothiers were numerous in the long row of buildings which looked down upon the levee. And a wild, dirty, bleak, windy, unattractive place that levee is a steep bank sloping down to the edge of the river, with winding paths traced out on it for the carts to load and un- load the steamers. On the opposite bank of the stream, looking as forlorn and as melancholy as it is possible for a town to look, is Jeffersonville in Indiana. All the towns in Indiana are dreary, but Jeffersonville, I think, would be likely to win the prize in a contest for the honour of dreariness. It belongs to that State in which Artemus Ward describes his celebrated town of Baldinsville, a State wherein every place has more or less of a bald, grace- less, raw-boned, and unadorned appearance where, in every town, the streets are purposely made wide that the sun may have every chance of warming you in the broiling summer, and the wind lose no opportunity for sweeping along in one huge ferocious blast during the cold days of winter. Yet Jeffersonville is a town of some importance. It contains the railway station, where you take the train for Indianapolis, and the Penitentiary, in which many of the wild spirits of 56 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. Indiana enjoy the sweets of repose and chew the cud of reflection. A stroll along the chilly banks of the Ohio late in the afternoon was a good stimulant for a visit to the cosy little Louisville theatre in the evening. The lessee of the theatre was Mrs. Mary Lorton, and the manager Captain Fuller. There was a touch of the brigand in the captain's appearance, something which called to my mind Fra Diavolo, Schinderhannes, Zamiel, the late O. Smith, and the deep-voiced heroes of the Surrey theatre. He wore a large cloak and a broad-brimmed felt hat ; and as my friends and I approached him, his arms were folded under his ample cloak, as if in the act of clutching a dagger. His reception of us was most courteous. Beneath the guise of a brigand we found the manners of an Alfred Jingle, with the hospitality of a Mr. Wardle, and the warm-heartedness of a Mr. Pickwick. The interior of the house was a little dingy, but very comfortably arranged. A " star" was in possession of the stage, and that star was Mr. Neafie, a tragedian well known to American playgoers. Had he not been playing the character of " Meta- mora" we might have stayed longer to witness the performance ; but the play of Metamora itself is one of those wondrous dramas so well characterized by a Western critic " One in which the unities are ad- mirably observed : the dulness which commences with the first act never flagging for a moment until the curtain falls." Far more interesting than the tragedy to Artemus Ward was a chat in the theatre with a friend of the famous Mr. Rice who introduced " Jim Crow" to the English public at the Adelphi theatre in 1836, and " JUMP JIM CROW." 57 who had but recently died in New York. The "burnt-cork profession/' as that of negro minstrelsy is frequently termed in the United States, was one towards the members of which Artemus Ward had a special attachment. Their peculiar mode of life and singularities of habit rendered them favourite subjects of study to one who delighted in absurd, grotesque, and out-of-the-way developments of character. Rice and " Jim Crow" were therefore more enjoyable topics than " Metamora" and his Indian friends. We ad- journed to where we could talk without disturbing others, and there it was that I found myself to be a pil- grim at the shrine of the birthplace of " Jim Crow/' " Yes, sir-ree," said our informant, " it was in this city of Louisville, in 1829, that Daddy Rice first jumped Jim Crow. Whar's all your minstrels spring from but here ? Whar's all the beautiful melodies of every minstrel band going take their start from but from old Kentucky ? I helped to black Daddy Rice's face the first night he sang; and if thar had been no Daddy Rice whar would have been your Bryants and your Christys, and your Moores, and your Eph Horns, and your Morrises, and your Pells ? Whar ? why, just no-whar. Yes, sir-ree ! that's whar." " I thought that Nicholls was the first man to sing Jim Crow ?" remarked Artemus, inquiringly. " As a clown, he was. Yes, sir-ree. Thar you are right. It was in Purdy Brown's Circus, too. But he blacked his face after Daddy Rice did his, and then he sang ' Clar de Kitchen/ I can hear Daddy Rice at it now * First on de heel tap, den on de toe, Every time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.' Thar was singing. Thar was something to listen to. 5 8 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. "Whar is it nowadays ? Thar's more on the stage to show off the art of the thing, but the art is nowhar. You can't see it. That's what's the matter. Yes, sir-ree \" "We have some very good black artists now," responded Artemus Ward. " Good, noble, whole-souled lovers of their art, who love it for the dollars and the whisky/' " Thar you are right again/' chimed in our infor- mant. " It's whisky in their souls that half of them have got. But Daddy Rice warn't upon that lay. He made Jim Crow as great a piece of acting in his way as Forrest makes anything in Shakspeare. Yes, sir-ree." I had seen enough of that curious race of per- formers, the black-minstrels, in America and in other parts of the world, to wish to know a little more about their origin and history. Fortunately a gentle- man happened to be present who appeared to be better informed on the subject than any one else. Waiting till the eulogist of Daddy Rice had departed, he favoured us with a few facts, of which I made notes at the time. It may interest some of my readers to know that the first white man who publicly sang a song with his face blackened was a personage known as Pot Pie Herbert. His song was entitled " The Battle of Plattsburg," and was sung by him on the stage of the theatre at Albany, in the State of New York, shortly after the little victory gained by the Americans over the British on Lake Champlain. So successful was Pot Pie Herbert with this song that he was engaged to sing it at the Park Theatre, New York, then the fashionable theatre of that city. His career would have been more brilliant had it not been for his having the fatal habit, to use an expression of poor Ward's, of " concealing too much whisky about NIGGER MINSTRELSY. 59 his person." Long afterwards, Mr. Keller, a low comedian, blackened his face, and sang " The Coal Black Rose " while a Mr. Barney Burns, with similar facial adornment, treated his audiences to the en- livening melody of " Sich a Gitting Up Stairs." But not until 1842 did a company of " Nigger Minstrels" appear in combination before the public. For the information of any one who feels an interest in the history of amusements, and who has wondered at the origin of the idea of a group of men singing songs in the character of negroes, at a popular hall in London, or less artistic performers of the same class executing grotesque vagaries on the sands at Ramsgate, it may not be out of place to mention that the original troupe started as a quartet party. They made their first appearance at the Chatham-street Theatre, in New York, calling themselves "The Virginia Minstrels." Their names were Richard Ward Pelham, Daniel Decatur Emmett, William Whittock, and Francis Marion Brower. The first song they sung was the still popular melody of " The Boatman's Dance." When Macaulay's New Zealander shall disinter a fossil banjo from among the ruins of Piccadilly, these facts may have interest for the editor of Notes and Queries in the world's metropolis of the Feejee Islands. The discussion on the origin of negro minstrelsy being brought to a close, Artemus Ward and I strolled through the streets of Louisville at night. Our con- versation related chiefly to the various forms of amuse- ments, and the eccentricities of those who make it their business to amuse. Many were the odd stories about minstrels and circus-men told me by my companion in the course of our desultory ramble. During his engagements as reporter and editor 60 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. of the Toledo Commercial and the Cleveland Plain- dealer, Artemus Ward had met with most of the travelling showmen of celebrity, and become intimately acquainted with their history. He knew their good points, their shortcomings, their peculiarities of character and their eccentricities. The social life of the showman had been to him a special subject for study. He knew the showman at home as well as abroad knew him in his show and in his chamber, knew him in his unconventionalities of thought and understood him in his views of society, as well as in the under-current of feeling resulting from early experiences. Droll anecdotes and shrewd remarks followed one another rapidly, until we found our- selves at the hotel, parting company on the stairs. Then, after a few moments of silence and reflection, my friend said " I understand that you are used to the manage- ment of shows. Suppose one day you manage me ?" I replied that the proposal was one which I felt very well disposed to consider favourably, but ex- pressed a wish to know in what character I was likely to have the opportunity of managing him, and how he intended to constitute himself " a show/' He replied with mock gravity " A moral lecturer. There's nothing else to be made of me but that. And you must take me to England and Australia/' We bade each other " Good night !" and parted laughingly. The next morning I left by the train for St. Louis. Thence I started on a journey of many months' duration through the north-western States of America. Artemus Ward and I did not meet again till nearly a year and a half had passed away. Then, when we WE PART AT LOUISVILLE. 61 met, I listened to Artemus as he lectured to an audience of nearly two thousand people; and, while the laughter and applause resounded on every side, there came to my memory the night of our parting in Louisville. The " moral lecturer" was before me. Were we ever to go to England and Australia together ? The question was left for Time to answer. In a very few years came the full reply. We were destined to be associated in California among the gold-miners, and in Salt Lake among the Mormons. We were to travel the United States, and be friends in London; but never to visit Australia, nor after leaving American ground were we to meet upon it again any more. In this chapter and those which precede it the reader has been made acquainted with the circum- stances that led to my first personal knowledge of Artemus Ward. By the help of note-books I have endeavoured to recount faithfully the incidents of our first meeting, and to depict the scenes amongst which we met. Before I proceed with the narrative of our acquaintance, and previous to detailing any further reminiscences of show-life in the Western World, it may be proper perhaps that I should devote a few pages to the early history of him the story of whose life I have undertaken to tell. Let me premise that the few facts I have to relate about the youth of " the Showman" are mainly gathered from his state- ments to me during the period of our intimacy. Rela- tive to his own affairs he was always reticent, and when interrogated about his early career, seemed to re- gard the subject as a farce, worthy only of being treated with laughter ; or, rather as a transient jest, which had served its purpose and merited nothing more than to be laid aside, unthought of and never to be recalled. 62 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. CHAPTER V. MAINE THE HOME OF THE HUMORIST. CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE, whose nom de plume was " Artemus Ward," was born at the upper village of Waterford, Oxford County, Maine, on the twenty-sixth of April, 1834. His father, Mr. Levi Browne, was a land surveyor and rural justice of the peace. His mother, Caroline E. Browne, still lives, and is a hale active lady of advanced years, who has survived the' loss of husband and children, and whose physical strength still enables her to take long journeys in the summer weather, when she leaves her secluded home in Maine and travels to see the busy world as represented in the pleasant city of Port- land, or in the thronged and noisy streets of charming old Boston. The family of the Brownes dates back to the days of the Puritans, and has been long resident in the State of Maine. There appears to be an uncertainty in the family as to the correct orthography of the patronymic. In signing his proper name Charles Browne used a final " e." I have before me letters re- ceived from him in America and the visiting card which he used in London. The name in each instance is spelt " Browne." But I also have letters written by THE SHOWMAN'S ANCESTRY. 63 his mother in which the final " e " is omitted from the signature. Noticing this variation of spelling, I once took occasion to question Artemus Ward on the subject. His reply was to the effect that he believed the final vowel was always used by his ancestors, but that his father at one period of his life omitted it in his signature, and that some of his relations retained it, whilst others dispensed with it as being superfluous. I was anxious to know if he possessed any information relative to the English county whence the family originated in pre-Puritanic times. He replied jocosely, " I should think we came from Jerusalem, for my father's name was Levi, and we had a Nathan and a Moses in the family. But my poor brother's name was Cyrus, so perhaps that makes us Persians/' Maine is the Scotland of the United States ; it is the " Land of the mountain and the flood," the land of the pine-forest and the moose-deer of the lonely lake and the narrow glen of the cloud-kissing hill and the torrent leaping in madness from crag to crag. It is the most northern as well as the most eastern of the States of the American Union. The uncleared lands of Canada, and the secluded glories of the lower St. Lawrence limit it on the north- west ; the forest solitudes of New Brunswick, and the fierce waves of the Atlantic, are its boundaries on the east ; while on the south-west the snow-capped White Mountains of New Hampshire guard it like grim sentinels, jealous of its wealth of scenic grandeur ; for in Maine there are lakes fifty miles in extent, and mountains five thousand feet high. Historic associations are all that Maine requires to render it as much the favourite resort of the tourist 64 THE GENIAL SHOmfAN. in search of the picturesque as it is now the chosen ground of the hardy hunter, and the adventurous sportsman. Its climate is cold, bleak, and invigorating a climate where the summer is brief, but glorious, and the winter lengthy, but thoroughly enjoyable a blue sky overhead ; hard, shining, sparkling snow covering the ground, the wind making music among the pines, and the sleigh-bells tinkling as the sleighs glide swiftly over the frosty plain. " Caledonia, stern and wild/' may be as Scott expresses it, " meet nurse" for a poet ; but the wild magnificence of rock-bound, icy, dark- forested Maine, would hardly seem to be the fitting cradle for a humorist who evinced very little appre- ciation of the beautiful or grand in natural scenery, but cared infinitely more to notice, to study, and to enjoy the comic side of conventional city life. A traveller arriving at Quebec after having made a tour through the Canadas and being about to visit the United States, would be most likely to avail him- self of the facilities offered by the Grand Trunk line. He would take the train at the terminus on the St. Lawrence, opposite Quebec, travel through the forest wilds of Canada down to Richmond, and on through Sherbrooke, till crossing the boundary line of the States, he would enter Vermont, and come to a stop at the romantic station of Island Ponds. Arriving there late, he would most probably stay a few hours and sleep at the hotel specially intended for his halting-place. Rising very early in the morning, and waiting for the engine to get up steam, he would have time to notice the solitary beauty of the locality, the gloomy grandeur of the woods around, and the placid brightness of the miniature lakes, whence the station obtains its name PARIS IN THE BACKWOODS. 65 of Island Ponds. The clearness of the morning, the sharpness of the air, and the grateful fragrance of the pine forest, would most likely tempt him to indulge in some breakfast before taking the train for Portland. He would do well to let that breakfast be substan- tial, and never mind being told that Paris is near, and that he can breakfast there. It is just possible that the name of the place might suggest ideas of luxurious cafes, looking out upon gay boulevards, of breakfasts with the most tempting of viands, and the most unexceptionable wines. Would the traveller know the difference between Paris and Paris ? He has only to wait. After being whirled through the forests, and hurried through the mountain gorges, over streams roaring amidst the rocks, and " foaming brown with doubled speed," as they rush through their channels of grey granite ; he would catch a distant glimpse of the Androscoggin river to his left, and see peaks of the White Mountains glittering far off to his right. If he became very hungry, he might glance at the back of the little card-check the conductor had given him, count how many miles there were yet to be travelled before arriving at the refresh- ment station, and having entered the State of Maine, would suddenly come to a halt, be told that he had arrived at South Paris, and that he might refresh to his heart's content. Probably he would find as the writer did, when very hungry that some squash tarts " pies " they call them in the States some cold pork and beans, and some wretchedly poor coffee, would comprise the whole menu of the railway restaurant at South Paris. But if more fortunate, able to obtain a good repast, and disinclined to travel on to Portland by that train ; and if, being an F 66 TEE GENIAL SHOWMAN. admirer of the writings of Artemus Ward, he felt inclined to pay a visit to the birthplace of Charles Farrar Browne, he might make inquiry and learn that the village of Waterford was only a few miles off, amidst some charming scenery, wherein the rougher aspects of nature are commingled with the rustic characteristics of a " down-eastern" agricultural district. Oxford County, in which the upper and lower village of Waterford is situated, forms a part of the south-west angle of the State of Maine. More to the north the industrial pursuits of the inhabitants of the State are chiefly directed to the lumber trade that is, to felling the fir-trees, floating them down the rivers, and converting them into timber. But in Oxford County agriculture can be made a more remunerative source of profit, while the excellent pasturage opens-up another avenue for the hardy inhabitants to derive wealth from the soil, There is an extensive culture of Indian corn and potatoes, and the trade in wool is very considerable. The country is well watered by the Androscoggin river and two smaller streams, the Margallaway and the Saco. It contains also some small lakes, yielding plenteous sport to the angler. Paris is the chief town of the county ; but the nearest city of any size is the very beautiful one of Augusta, about forty miles distant, the capital of the State of Maine, and the seat of learning for that part of the country. Portland, the chief commercial city of the State, is many miles away to the south- east. It is one of the most handsome cities in the Union, and makes a pleasing impression on the European tourist who chances to see it in summer ; so beautiful is its position on the shores of a THE SHOWMAN'S VILLAGE. 67 lovely bay ; so shady are its streets, with their stately rows of trees j and so clean, bright, and well-con- structed are its buildings. The people of Maine are a hard-working, strong, and adventurous race, the ladies being especially notable for their beauty of form and freshness of colour. As the State in which the celebrated Liquor Law originated, and the home of Neal Dow, the traveller is prepared to meet with a very temperate community. In passing through Portland he will see a notice over one of the doors of the old Town-hall, if it be still standing, that strong liquor can be obtained there on production of a medical certificate; but do not let him run away with the notion that it cannot be obtained anywhere else, nor without medical per- mission. The hotels have each a bar downstairs in the cellar, and there are quiet whisky shops all over the city. But there is none of the open and even obtrusive allurements of the bar-room noticeable in cities further south. The men of Maine are men of clear head, sinewy frame, large bone, and iron muscle ; men who formed the sturdiest among the pioneers of California, and the hardiest of soldiers in the great American war. Poor Artemus Ward, with his thin, spare form and delicate organization, was by no means a representative man with regard to the physical qua- lifications of his countrymen. If the reader will turn to one of the humorous papers of Artemus Ward, entitled " Affairs Round the Village Green," he will meet with a description of the birthplace of the author, as pleasantly joked about by himself. The " village green" is his own native village of Waterford. " The village from which I write to you is small," to quote from the paper to which F 2, 68 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. reference has just been made. " It does not contain over forty houses all told ; but they are milk-white, with the greenest of blinds, and for the most part are shaded with beautiful elms and willows. To the right of us is a mountain to the left a lake. The village nestles between. Of course it does. I never read a novel in my life in which the villages didn't nestle. Villages invariably nestle. It is a kind of way they have." To this village, in the hot days of the American summer, Artemus Ward was always glad to retire, that he might rest during warm weather in the home of his youth. A humble home, but a very comfortable, cosy little farm. A homestead which he loved with the fondness of one who was intense in his affections. At the death of his father that little home was not secured to the family. To secure it for his mother was the ambition of his youth ; and one of the first uses he made of the money derived from his writings and his lectures, was to see his mother safely housed for life in what he used to refer to endearingly as " the old homestead/' To escape from the enervating influences of New York or any of the large cities, and to retreat to that " old homestead" down in Maine, was his panacea for all the ills that might overtake him, for there he found the recruiting ground where health came back to him in the air he had breathed in his boyhood, and where^ loitering through the long summer days, he would be- come re-invigorated and ready for his winter campaign. He who has been imprisoned in the streets of London for ten or twelve months, and then has the opportunity of rushing off to the Highlands or becom- ing a Cook's excursionist to Switzerland, can appreciate the luxury of a month in Maine, after spending three THE VILLAGE GEEEN. 69 parts of the summer in noisy New York, monumental Baltimore, or prim Philadelphia. How much the poor humorist appreciated the de- lights of that rural home " away down in Maine" how proudly he remembered that it was his home, and how keenly he enjoyed the pleasure of returning to it when opportunity offered may be estimated from the opening paragraph of the paper from which I have already quoted. Artemus is exultant when he writes " It isn't every one who has a village green to write about. I have one, although I have not seen much of it for some years past. I am back again, now. In the language of the duke who went about with a motto ' I am here !' and I fancy I am about as happy a peasant of the vale as ever garnished a melo- drama, although I have not as yet danced on my village- green, as the melodramatic peasant usually does on his. . . . Why stay in New York when I had a village green? I gave it up, the same as I would an intri- cate conundrum and, in short, I am here. Do I miss the glare and crash of the imperial thoroughfare ? the milkman, the fiery, untamed omnibus horses, the soda- water fountains, Central Park, and those things ? Yes, I do, and can go on missing them for quite a spell, and enjoy it." And most thorough was that enjoyment, espe- cially when he could induce some old friend or companion of his boyhood to accompany him to his eastern home and spend a few days or weeks with him among its simple-minded inhabitants. " The villagers are kindly people," he writes ; and then sarcastically adds, " they are rather in- coherent on the subject of the war, but not more so, 70 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. perhaps, than are people elsewhere. One citizen who used to sustain a good character subscribed for the Weekly New York Herald a few months since, and went to studying the military maps in that well-known journal for the fireside. I need not inform you that his intellect now totters, and he has mortgaged his farm." To stroll around among these " kindly people," to chat with the villagers, storekeepers, and mechanics, to converse with the farmers about the produce of their farms and to discuss with the owners of horse-stock the value of horses, to joke with the more astute of his old schoolfellows, and to test the crass density of in- tellect among the country clowns by propounding to them political and social conundrums, to guess which they were simply incapable, were the favourite modes of dissipating the dulness of rural life which Artemus Ward adopted. He wrote very little during these summer recesses. Most of his humorous papers were written in the great cities and under the stimulus of literary society. When at home, among the hills of Maine, he preferred the company of jovial com- panions, and was especially fond of that of Mr. Setchell. To the possession of great talents as a low comedian, Mr. Setchell added the qualifications of one whose flow of animal spirits was almost inexhaustible, and whose jocose vein of humour was in admirable harmony with that of his friend. Artemus Ward and Mr. Setchell would ramble out together on a summer evening, fall into the company of any visitors to the village who were not well aware of their manner of seeking amusement, and commence a conversation on some singular topic, which they would carry on in a THE SHOWMAN AT HOZfE. 71 seemingly irrational manner after the style of the chat about the brigands with the lady on the Louis- ville steamer, as related in a previous chapter. To mystify and thoroughly muddle the intellect of Boeotia was the point of the joke, and to be looked upon as a pair of lunatics just escaped from the State Lunatic Asylum was fully to succeed in their waggery. But poor Setchell said many good things in his time, and was original in his facetiousness. He was the very man for a host who could appreciate humour to select for his guest, especially as the guest had that constant vivacity which frequently accompanies redundancy of health, while the host was occasionally moody through the presence of physical weakness. It was the misfortune of Artemus Ward to lose by death most of his youthful jovial companions. Amongst that number was Mr. Setchell. He sailed from San Francisco in a ship bound for Australia. I believe that neither he, nor the ship was ever heard of again. From that which I have stated relative to the "village green," the reader must not suppose Artemus Ward to have spent the whole of his time when at home in the country in making merry with the villagers and jesting with the playful spirits whom he might invite to visit him. Though he wrote but little, he read much in a desultory manner, and was careful to keep himself well informed on the political condition of his country, as well as very fairly acquainted with the current light literature of the day. He took great interest in the education of the young, was especially fond of the society of children, and delighted in making happy the juvenile portion of the community of " the village green." With the fair sex he was always a favourite ; " I like little girls I like big girls 72 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. too/' as lie used to remark in one of his lectures. But to question children, to ascertain their little wants, study their quaint fancies and sport with them in the moments of his y leisure, was as much a characteristic habit of his earlier years as it was of the last days of his life, when he bequeathed his library to the best boy in his native village. Waterford, like every other place large or small in America, has its " store," at which articles of the most heterogeneous description may always be found on sale. . / " The store I must not forget the store" writes Artemus. " It is an object of great interest to me. In it may constantly be found calico, and .nails, and fish, and tobacco in kegs, and snuff in bladders. It is a venerable establishment. As long ago as 1814 it was an institution. The country troops, on their way to the defence of Portland, then menaced by British ships of war, were drawn up in front of this very store and treated at the town's expense." Eeferring to the customers who frequent the store, the writer con- tinues " I usually encounter there on sunny after- noons an old Revolutionary soldier. You may possibly have read about ' Another Revolutionary Soldier gone -,' but this is one who hasn't gone, and moreover one who doesn't manifest the slightest intention of going. He distinctly remembers Washington, of course. They all do. But what I wish to call special attention to is the fact that this Revolutionary soldier is one hundred years old, that his eyes are so good that he can read fine print without spectacles he never used them, by the way and his mind is per- fectly clear. He is a little shaky in one of his legs; but otherwise he is as active as most men of forty-five, PICTURES OF MAINE. 73 and his general health is excellent. He uses no tobacco ; but for the last twenty years he has drunk one glass of liquor every day no more, no less. He says he must have his ' tod/ But because a man can drink a glass of liquor a day and live to be a hundred years old, my young readers must not infer that by drink- ing two glasses of liquor a day a man can live to be two hundred/' However, the Revolutionary soldier is an apt illustration of the healthfulness of the district, while the daily habit in which he indulges exemplifies one of the uses of " a store" even in the antibibulous St-te of Maine. Endeared as it was by youthful recollections, the old " store'' was not the only place near home which Artemus Ward loved to visit. Nowhere in his writings does he more pleasantly betray the gentle spirit and kindly nature which underlay all his rollicking frivolity and all his sarcastic matter-of-fact, than where he describes a house in the neighbourhood of fe the village green" which he was in the habit of going to occasionally. Thus he pictures it, and thus he permits the reader to know more of his feelings and his inner self than he at all times cared to dis- play " Sometimes I go a- visiting to a farmhouse, on which occasions the parlour is opened. The windows have been close shut ever since the last visitor was there, and there is a dingy smell that I struggle as calmly as possible with, until I am led to the banquet of steam- ing hot biscuit and custard pie. If they would only let me sit ia the dear old-fashioned kitchen, or on the door-stone if they knew how dismally the new black furniture looked but never mind. I am not a re- 7 4 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. former* No, I should rather think not. Gloomy- enough this living on a farm, you perhaps say ; in which ease you are wrong. I can't exactly say that I pant to be an agriculturist ; but I do know that in the main it is an independent, calmly happy sort of life. I can see how the prosperous farmer can go joyously a-field with the rise of the sun, and how his heart may swell with pride over bounteous harvests and sleek oxen. And it must be rather jolly for him on winter even- ings to sit before the bright kitchen fire, and watch his rosy boys and girls as they study at the charades in the weekly paper, and gradually find out why my first is something that grows in a garden and why my second is a fish." Chatting with me one day relative to the people amongst whom his boyhood had been spent, Artemus thus characterized them " They are very rough, but they are a lot of good old souls. They don't understand me. Some of them bless their kind hearts ! think I ought to be sent to the State prison for having changed my name. Most of them pity me for a poor idiot. Some of them want to make me good. They would give up all their time in trying to make me so, and be self-forgetful enough to let themselves run to the bad. They'd howl for the old flag, and never buy a bit of new bunting to mend it with when it got to tatters." The father of Charles Farrar Browne died while his sons were very young. He was a shrewd man, with much geniality of disposition and some amount of humour. Though in comfortable circumstances, he was not in a position to acquire much wealth, and could leave no fortune to his children. Charles was educated at the high-school, where he learned the nidi- CHILDHOOD OF THE SHOWMAN. 75 ments of knowledge. He was taught English grammar, arithmetic, recitation, the facts of American history, and the elements of physiology. He smiled when he informed me of the tuition he had received in this last branch of learning. According to his own account and the testimony of those whom I have interrogated on the subject, he was an apt pupil, without any power of application one who was reputed to be able to learn well if he would but apply himself, but who very much disliked the trammels with which study too often vainly tries to hold the student. A hatred of routine and a lack of method were characteristics of the man, as they had been of the boy ; and no one more than himself in later years deplored this. I called upon him one day in London, just after he had had an interview with Mr. Mark Lemon. He appeared to be more than usually grave, and on asking him the reason for his apparent depression he replied, " Mr. Lemon tells me that I want discipline. I know I want discipline. I always did want it, and I always shall." Then, in a serio-comic mood, he added " Can you get me a stock of discipline, old fellow ? You have more of it over here than we have in the States. I should like some." Referring to the extent of his early learning, he told one of his friends that when he left school he had t( about enough education for a signboard." And when he gave instructions for the drawing up of his will, he directed that his page George should be sent to a printing-office first, and afterwards to college, remark- ing at the time, " In the printing-office he will find the value of education, and want to learn when he gets the chance. I lost the chance before I felt the want." 76 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. While at school, declamation was that part of the curriculum of duties which the boy Charles Browne liked the best. In the education of American youth elocution is made more a matter of study than it usually is in England. Every school-girl is taught to recite Tennyson's " May Queen/' and there are few youths who have not declaimed to their brother scholars some of the glowing periods of Daniel Webster, or selections from the stately versification of William Cullen Bryant. I am told that Charles Browne pre- ferred Shakspeare to either Webster or Bryant, and that Richard the Third was a play which appealed the most forcibly to his youthful fancy. Waterford and its neighbourhood were visited occasionally by travelling shows. In the summer one or two circus companies were pretty certain to wander that way ; and a circus was something better even than Shakspeare. Artemus Ward in his maturer years seemed to regard a circus as being a greater source of amusement than a theatre. He knew all the circus clowns in America, had all their jokes by heart, and was frequently sought after by them to provide them with a few new jests. When a boy, he constructed a circus in his father's barn. A schoolfellow acted as ring-master, while Artemus would play the part of clown, dressing himself up for the occasion with coloured pocket-hand- kerchiefs. He made sundry attempts at private theatri- cals. According to his own confession, he never acquitted himself very successfully in any of the principal characters of the drama. He told me that he once tried to play Homeo, but forgot the words, and had to ask Juliet in front of the audience to hand him the book from her bosom, that he might read that which he had to say to her. His brother Cyrus gave me LEARNING TO FEINT. 77 a much more favourable account of the histrionic ability of Artemus, and ventured an opinion that he would have made a good comedian. Cyrus Browne died a few years before his younger brother Charles. I last saw him in Portland, looking very worn and haggard. He was then anxious for information relative to the British North American provinces, and meditated a trip through them with his brother, but scarcely seemed to have health enough for so long a journey. Cyrus was a man of considerable talent ; more reserved and more metho- dical than Charles. I believe that he was connected with newspaper literature during the greater part of his life, and that he was at one period on the editorial staff of the New Bedford Standard, at New Bedford in Massachusetts. Family circumstances induced the parents of Charles Browne to take him from school when quite a boy, before he had the opportunity of proceeding to the higher branches of study. The occupation selected for him was that of a printer. He was sent to learn the rudiments of the craft at a small newspaper office in the little town of Skowhegan, some miles to the north of his native village. To the last days of his career he had a bitter remembrance of his first experiences in a printing-office. He was accustomed to set up a howl of derision whenever the name of Skowhegan was mentioned. He seemed to be gratify- ing a long-cherished revenge on the little place by holding it up to ridicule, and alluding to anything rough, uncouth, and unpleasant as worthy of Skow- hegan. Artemus asked a friend once, in my presence, whether his acquaintance with the American press was very 78 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. extensive. The person interrogated replied that he knew most of the American newspapers. Whereupon Artenms inquired if the Skowhegan Clarion was among the number ? On being replied to that it was not, he looked pityingly at the party with whom he was in conversation and said, "I am sorry for you if you don't read the Skowhegan Clarion. It is your duty to read it. There is no paper like it in the States nor anywhere else \" Before he was sixteen years of age Charles Browne left his home, bade farewell to the Skowhegan Clarion, and quitted his native State of Maine to seek his fortune in the metropolis of New England. He was not " Artemus Ward" then, had no influential friends to tender him a helping hand, nor any well-filled purse to console him for the loss of old companions ; but he had ambition, a light heart, and excellent spirits ; in addition to all of which he was in a land where the willing hand can always find work to do, and where youth is thought to be of some value a land where a man can get his chance before his hair is grey, his strength gone, and the freshness of his intellect has faded for ever. MRS. PARTINGTON." 79 CHAPTER VI. CLEVELAND HOW MR. CHARLES BROWNE BECAME "ARTEMUS WARD." " 1\/T RS ' PAE/riNGTON " is an old Iad 7 who 1VJ. once enjoyed extensive celebrity in the United States, and who still lives in the memory of her friends as one who contributed largely to their mirth, and helped to make happy many of their hours of ease. She is a most eccentric old character, apt to raise many ridiculous objections, say many absurd things, and commit herself in various egregiously in- consistent actions. She is the national Mrs. Malaprop. Her utterances are always provocative of laughter, while her opinions and deeds are a never-failing source of amusement. She owes her birth to Mr. B. P. Shillaber of Chelsea, near Boston, who, when I travelled in America with Artemus Ward, was one of the editors of the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. A small and mildly-comic journal, entitled The Carpet Bag, was the organ of " Mrs. PartingtonV communications with the public. Mr. Shillaber one of the most genial, warm-hearted, sincere, and tho- roughly estimable of men was the editor of The Carpet Bag, and the author of the sayings and doings of the celebrated old lady. Charles Browne, fresh 8o TEE GENIAL SHOWMAN. from Maine, a mere youth, with all the crudities of the country about him, and of a singularly lean and lank appearance, offered himself as a compositor in the office of The Carpet Bag, and readily found employ- ment. Among the contributors to the paper were Mr. Charles G. Halpine, who under the sobriquet of " Miles O'Reilly" achieved much reputation as a humorist, and Mr. John G. Saxe, one of the most accomplished authors of American light literature, as well as one of the most eloquent and fascinating lec- turers in the United States. Day by day, as the youthful compositor from Maine set up the articles of these talented writers, he studied and enjoyed their humour, until at length the idea crept into his mind that possibly he could write a funny article, if not as well as they could, at least well enough for it to have a chance of getting into The Carpet Bag. Then why not try ? " He listened to that ' still small voice' in the heart'' to quote the words of the elder Disraeli " which cries with Correggio and with Montesquieu, 1 Ed 10 anche son pittore !' 3 ' So listening, he tried, wrote an article, disguised his handwriting, put his contribution into the editor's box, and enjoyed the triumph of having it given out to him to set up at case, without the editor knowing that the compositor to whom he gave it was the youth by whom it had been written ! " I went to the theatre that evening. Had a good time of it, and thought that I was the greatest man in Boston/' added Artemus Ward, after telling me this anecdote of his first success. His eyes glistened while he spoke, and the animation of his manner betrayed that he lived his triumph over again in remembering the joy with which it was won. His narration of it THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. Plate IV. The view above may recall, to those who have seen it, Mr. Bierstadt's celebrated picture. ROCKY MOUNTAINS' SCENERY. This picture is a continuation of the preceding one. Artemus Ward once passed a day among an encampment of Sioux, whose numbers ex- ceeded 3000 ; they are generally, however, of smaller proportions. AHEEICAN HUMORISTS. 81 reminded me of the preface to " Pickwick/' in which Mr. Charles Dickens recounts how he dropped his first essay " with fear and trembling into a dark letter-box in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet-street," and how, when it appeared in print, he " walked do wn to Westminster Hall and turned into it for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there/' A statement has appeared in some of the American papers, to the effect that " Mrs. Partington" was the model which Charles Browne used for the creation of that peculiar display of humour which characterizes the writings of " Artemus Ward ;" but I have the authority of the author's own statement to me for re- cording that the humorous writings of Seba Smith were his models, so far as humour thoroughly sui generis can be said to have had any model whatever. It is true, as one Transatlantic writer has suggested, that the satirical vein in which Mr. Saxe writes of the commonplaces of society, and the sarcasm with which Mr. Halpine treats political topics, may have influ- enced the mind of the young humorist from Maine, and contributed to form the characteristics of his style ; but John Phoenix was an author of whom Artemus Ward was accustomed to speak in terms of admiring familiarity, more than of either of the above-named contributors to the comic literature of America. While resident in Boston, Charles Browne availed himself of every chance of visiting the theatre. He studied the plays and courted the society of the actors and actresses. There were few of what are by courtesy termed legitimate plays with which he did not become 82 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. acquainted while a mere youth. Boston soon seemed to be too circumscribed a place in which to remain any longer. Naturally nomadic in disposition, he left the great city to go and see the greater world outside. Plays of a grander character, and actors and actresses of far more importance, were awaiting him there. Like a German artisan, Charles Browne wished to learn his craft while travelling from city to city, and while studying the habits of many men. According to his own confession, the early career of Mr. Bayard Taylor, as a travelling journeyman printer, had stimulated him to imitation, and the vocation, of a compositor offered him peculiar facilities for earning his bread in what- ever town he might be led by circumstances or by caprice. He wandered through the State of Massachusetts, made two or three halts in the State of New York, and after a year or two had passed away, came to a stopping place at a little town called Tiffin, situated in Seneca county, Ohio. He once told me that at that time he could seldom keep five dollars in his pocket, and, if I am rightly informed, he walked into the town of Tiffin with much less than that amount, and with a change of clothes rolled up in a bundle, and carried on his back. The wandering life led by Artemus Ward in his earliest years has been instanced by some of his less kindly critics, as proof of an aimless, purposeless character. On the contrary, it was in full accordance with his youngest ambition, and with the well-con- sidered design of his boyhood. He wished to see the world ; he desired to be a traveller and emulate Bayard Taylor. With a " composing-stick" to use as a workman, and the ability to pick up his than some of his fellow- TOLEDO OF THE WEST. 83 craftsmen, he thought that he could accomplish his design. " I didn't know but ~$hat I might get as far as China, and set up a newspaper one day in the tea-chest tongue," was his remark, when upon one occasion he alluded to this period of his career. In the town of Tiffin, Artemus Ward undertook the double duties of reporter and compositor. His salary amounted to four dollars per week, and much of the chief work of the Tiffin newspaper was entrusted to him. Though the remuneration was slight, the life he led was a joyous one. His cleverness and frank good humour won him many friends, while the chances he had of saying a good word for those who deserved it, caused him never to be without a dollar. In a news- paper sketch of his life written by Mr. Townsend, the writer says : " People in Tiffin remember him still, in the luxury of new apparel, purchased by a notice of our enterprising townsman, the dry-goods merchant, and making free with strangers in the town of which he was the crowning hospitality. Every travelling show that happened in the place found in him a patron, and he was most generally behind the scenes, happy as a king in the friendship of clown and acrobat, who recognised in him the traditional good fellow and incipient genius." Tiffin could not hold its new hero of the press for ever. Fortune beckoned him to take a trip to Toledo, and to Toledo he went. Not to Toledo of the Spaniard and the Moor; not that glorious old Toledo where the Jew stored his learning and the Saracen found his steel, but a very different Toledo indeed a young Toledo, situated at the western end of Lake Erie, with Dundee not far off, and 84 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. Vienna close at hand. The Toledo Commercial was the name of the journal which wooed Artemus Ward from his temporary home in Tiffin, and to be- come engaged on it at a slight increase of the salary he had been receiving, he migrated with high hopes and a light heart. It was a wild harum-scarum sort of town to migrate to that Toledo of the west. I retain a lively recollection of two days spent in it during winter ; and when I wish to go somewhere to spend two cold days in winter another time I think that I shall not select Toledo. It has left upon my mind a picture of a town half-built, a picture of wooden side-walks and roads knee-deep in mud :of canals and rough-mannered boatmen of one hotel over the arch of the railway station, with din enough beneath to prevent any one from sleeping, and of another hotel much larger and dismally grand, away out in the fields, to which I tried to get home in the dark, along a plank footpath, and narrowly escaped suffocation in a pool of watery mud. But for all that the town is a very busy one, the inhabitants are go-ahead people, and as they are aware that the Spanish namesake of their town was famous for its swords, they also have started a Toledo Blade ; only it happens to be a newspaper with that title instead of being an article of cutlery. Happy Toledo, where they have no use for their " Blades " except for the exercise of their pens ! While engaged on The Toledo Commercial, Artemus Ward acquired his first reputation as a writer of sarcastic paragraphs. He commenced as a compositor and rose to be a reporter. The reporter of the other paper and he waged continual war. Western editors are by no means sparing in their abuse of one another, ' THE CLEVELAND PLAINDEALER." 85 and frequently mistake unwarrantable vituperation for galling satire. Toledo required excitement, and the new " local editor* ' was permitted to be as vivacious as he pleased. Permission was given him to cut and slash. What fairer chance could a very young author desirous of making a name possibly want? But Artemus did his work with talent as well as energy. He could be humorous as well as caustic, he could be witty as well as ferocious. Therein he had the advan- tage of his opponent on the antagonistic journal. His column of the paper soon became the one which every- body read. The articles in it were purely of local interest and not worth reprinting; but they served their purpose admirably at the time. The skill of the writer attracted attention, his fame travelled along the shore of Lake Erie, and in the summer of 1858, when Charles Browne had attained his twenty-fourth year, he received an invitation from Mr. J. W. Gray of Cleveland to change his place of abode to that city, and become local reporter of The Cleveland Plaindealer, at a salary of twelve dollars per week ! In all the great State of Ohio there is not a more pleasant city than Cleveland. In winter it partakes of the general cheerlessness of the new cities of the West ; but in summer its broad streets, most of them ornamental, shaded with green trees, and kept cool by the fresh breezes off Lake Erie, render it a delightful place of residence. There is one street called Euclid-street though what the old geometri- cian of Alexandria had to do with it I am at a loss to imagine which for its beauty, its leafy trees, its well-built villas, its stately aspect, and its cleanly con- dition, would be worthy of Paris, in the neighbourhood of the BoiSj or of Berlin in the vicinity of the Bran- 86 THE GENIAL 8EOWMAN. denburgh Gate. In a stroll along this beautiful street, on a moonlight evening, some five years ago, Artemus Ward detailed to me many of his early experiences in the fair city of Cleveland; how he journeyed to it from Toledo ; how he toiled as a reporter on the Plaindealer ; how he wrote himself into celebrity; became :( Art emus Ward, the Showman/'' and having gained a name throughout the United States, was at length invited to leave the seclusion of Lake Erie, aud become an editor in the great metropolis of New York. Cleveland is a goodly city to look upon if you look at it in the right direction. " Every medal has its reverse/' says the old Italian proverb ; so has every city. There are few cities among some hundreds with which I am acquainted that have not their work-clay and their holiday side. Cleveland is a most agreeable town in the neighbourhood of Euclid-street, or of the public square, but it is a very noisy place round about Pittsburgh and Kinsman streets on market mornings ; and a very dirty, smoky one where the Cuyahoga river, down in a deep valley, flows past manufactories with tall chimneys, and workshops grimy with the soot of forges and the smoke of furnaces. The office of the Cleveland Plaindealer is at the corner of two streets ; the approach to it along the main street is pleasant enough, for that is broad, open, and airy, but the corner on which the newspaper office stands is one where the traveller in search of the beautiful would not be likely to linger long. Why the light of the press should be given forth from narrow courts, dingy back streets, pestiferous alleys, and uncomfortable corners, is a problem re- quiring solution. But an awkward building, hard to t THE EDITORS EOOX. 87 find, and unpleasant to visit, is in too many instances the one chosen for the home of the daily or weekly journal, and the abode of gloom, in which the slave of the pen shall write brilliant leading articles, or spark- ling paragraphs, using the pyrotechny of his art to light up the darkness of his studio. The office to which Mr. Charles Browne was con- signed was no exception to the general rule. What- ever of the bright, the cheerful, and the sunny was destined to emanate from the pen of the young journalist, had to be " evolved from his inner consci- ousness/' for there was nothing suggestive of any of these qualities in the dreary room wherein he was expected to write his articles. Nor had he an apart- ment allotted to himself alone : a desk among desks, a corner amongst the corners of a many-cornered small room, was all that was allowed him. There he was supposed to write out his reports, and jot down his humorous fancies, amidst the interruptions of an editor's room in the West, open as it is to pretty nearly all comers, from the politician boiling over with some exciting political news, to the agent of the showman, anxious to expatiate on the merits of a coming show, or the enterprising tradesman, willing to pay his fair price for a laudatory notice of his new stock of goods. In such an office there is pretty sure to be near at hand a whisky-bottle, with some Bourbon or Monongahela whisky in it; the chairs are usually very much " whittled ;" and there are marks made by the heels of boots on the desks and on the tables. In some offices pencils take the place of pens, and the annoying sound of your fellow-workman's goose-quill is thereby obviated; but Artemus AVard had much faith in the stimulus of moist ink. His 88 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. little desk, still preserved in the office at Cleveland, is thoroughly well ink- stained, while his arm-chair bears in its cut and carved defacement copious evidence that when the penknife had nibbed the quill it was carelessly used as a convenient tool for " whittling." The politics of the Cleveland Plaindealer have always been what in the political technology of the United States is entitled Democratic. In England we use the word " Conservative" to express something nearly allied to the same idea. As it was the first, so I believe the Plaindealer is now the only, thoroughly Democratic daily paper in the north of the great State of Ohio. The politics of Artemus Ward were never very clearly defined by him, and I doubt if he ever had any clear political creed. In America politics are a trade. The tricks of the politicians were too evident to the glance of the genial humorist for him to attach much value to the trade or the tradesmen ; he laughed at the comicalities of the trade, satirized the rottenness of the business, and ridiculed the pretensions of the traders. For all that, his con- nexion with a leading Democratic journal influenced his views, gave a bias to his thoughts, and a colour to his writings. Not but that by nature he was a Conservative. I remember his going into raptures over his discovery of that paragraph in one of our Ex-Premier's novels, where Mr. Disraeli defiantly asks the question " Progress to what ? progress to Paradise or to Pandemonium ?" Artemus had very little faith in popular cries, and some doubts about the " vox populi" being the " vox Dei." His scepticism in this respect is frequently apparent in the sayings of his imaginary old showman. It crops out in many sly hints and caustic jests. A SHOWMAN'S POLITICS. 89 While engaged on the paper in Cleveland, his associates were mostly men who belonged to the Democratic party, and among them were some of the most talented. Mr. Joseph W. Gray, the pro- prietor and editor of the Plaindealer, was a man of brilliant wit and great ability. His contributions to the literature of the day were copied all over the Union ; and he was the confidential friend and adviser of the celebrated Stephen A. Douglas, who contested the election for the Presidential chair with Abraham Lincoln. Mr. John B. Bouton, a New York journalist of eminence, was another of Artemus Ward's asso- ciates during his reporting days. There was not a clever man in Cleveland or indeed in Ohio, no matter what his political sentiments or his peculiar tendencies with whom the young Western humorist did not become acquainted before he threw his pen down for the last time on the little desk in the editorial room of the Plaindealer. Later in life it was said of him that he knew more gentlemen of the Press in America than did any other man. To chronicle the local changes in the town, attend public meetings, report the proceedings of the muni- cipal magnates, notice concerts and criticise the per- formances at the theatre ElMer^s - ^-. .. j =^ *- ^*- ^-~ On the extreme right is seen the House of Legislature of Utah. The nature of the other buildings may be gathered from the inscriptions. ENTRANCE TO ECHO CANYON. Echo Canyon^ is about fifty-five miles from Salt Lake City. The extra- ordinary "bluffs" are yellow in colour, and of a conglomerate formation, full of small fossils. AMERICAN EDUCATION. 113 corner of his ample garment to keep warm the knees of a shivering fellow-traveller. In the States it is every man's duty to be informed, and you have only to ask for information to have it supplied to you in profusion. The clerk at the hotel, the conductor in the railroad " car/' and the policeman on the street, are only too happy to oblige, if you will but ask them in a civil manner for that which you want to know. But speak to them as though you were addressing an equal : though they know that they are servants of the public, they will not submit to any domineering from you as a supercilious master. The heterogeneous elements which enter into the education of a young American citizen, and the varied acquirements he is supposed to possess, are national characteristics, which have been amusingly burlesqued by the Boston humorist, Mr. B. P. Shillaber, who makes his celebrated " Mrs. Par- tington" say " For my part I can't deceive what on airth eddication is coming to. When I was young, if a girl only understood the rules of distrac- tion, provision, multiplying, replenishing, and the common denunciator, and knew all about rivers and their obituaries, the convents and dormitories, the provinces and the umpires, they had eddication enough. But now they have to study bottomy, algebery, and have to demonstrate supposition about the sycophants of circuses, tangents, and Diogenese of parallelogromy, to say nothing about the oxhides, corostics, and the abstruse triangles." A young lady educated as " Mrs. Partington," describes would possibly become as muddled in her mind as a young man chanced to be whom 1 once met at Birkenhead. Desirous of educating himself, he ii 4 THE GENIAL had purchased two volumes of an excellent work entitled The Popular Educator, in which the Arts and Sciences are made easy of comprehension in a series of condensed elementary treatises. I asked him what order he observed in his study of the various subjects. He replied, that wishing to educate himself thoroughly he had resolved to begin from the beginning, and to do so had taken the alphabetical index of contents for his guide. He had commenced with " Acoustics/' and gone on to " Anatomy/' " Architecture/' and " Astronomy." Thus he meant to go through with his studies gradually, and finish off with " Zoology." That there are reasons why a man should not know too much is illustrated ID an anecdote told by the well-known Mr. J. H. Hackett, in the New York Leader. He tells it of a certain Mr. John Kobinson, who offered himself as candidate for the office of Sheriff somewhere in Tennessee. Two farmers met one another on horseback, and the one asked the other whom he was going to vote for. " John Robinson/' was the reply. " Vote for him !" rejoined the other ; " why he's so ignorant he can't spell his given name, ' John / and what's worse, he is so stupid, I would bet you ten dollars you couldn't larn him to spell it between now and to-morrow noon." The bet was made, a place of meeting arranged for its decision, and the farmers parted. He who had made the bet rode off to the house of John Robinson, told him of the conversation and the bet, and ascer- tained that the poor fellow really could not spell his own name. The farmer proposed to teach him, and to divide the winnings. Robinson assented and per- suaded his tutor to stay all night. MR. HACKETTS STORY. 115 "Next morning, at breakfast to tell the anecdote in the words of Mr. Hackett " on John's being asked to spell the name he did so readily enough ; but his friend wasn't satisfied, and said, ' John, there may be some crooked ketch after all in such politics. There's time enough between now and noon, if you have a mind to larn the whole alphabet. I'll larn you from first to last that is, from A to Izzard' the latter being the common mode in America of naming the letter ' Z.' John agreed to be so high larnt ; and before noon, could say every letter from A to Izzard. Off they started at noon for the place appointed, where four or five of the neighbours had got together on purpose to hear John Robinson, and to judge whether he was able to spell his given name. Five men were appointed as judges, the bet recited, and John asked if he was ready to spell his name. John said 'Try me/ And the judges said, 'Well, spell John/ So John began with < J/ All the judges looked at him and at one another, and then nodded and said, ' Right next letter/ f O/ said John. They all looked at one another, as if there was some doubt about the letter, and said, f Right ; now next letter/ Said John "That's H/ John's friend seeing the judges, by halting in giving a judg- ment after each letter, had somewhat bothered him, cautioned him to keep cool till after the judges had done fooling, and had agreed and said, l Right/ Now for the next letter, when his friend assured ' John, we are all right now, but the last letter don't forget/ John hesitated, and thinking he meant the last letter of the alphabet, which he had just taken the trouble to learn, bellowed out, ' Izzard, by thunder !' and lost the bet." i 2 ii6 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. Mr. Hackett draws the moral from his anecdote that people are apt to know too much, and to suffer in consequence. "Without endorsing to the full that deduction, I honestly believe that if the good people across the water had fewer individuals in their midst who feel themselves effervescing with information, and under such high pressure that they must impart it without delay, there would be a less number of lecturers, and many a patient audience would escape being bored. As it is, everything is lectured upon, from the destinies of humanity down to the proper method of making a pumpkin-pie. The poor President, no matter which, affords the most fertile theme. He is lectured upon before he is elected, lectured to all the time that he is in office, and made to serve as a frightful example to point a lecturer's moral, or adorn a lecturer's tale, after his term of office is concluded. Lectures certainly count among the list of " shows" in the Western World. All the arts of the showman are employed in aid of their popu- larity; and the chief showman, Mr. P. T. Barnum, having abandoned the exhibition-room for the rostrum, goes forth to enlighten the multitude for the small fee of one hundred dollars per night and his ex- penses. I am not thoroughly acquainted with Mr. Barnum's views concerning the art of lecturing. But his idea of a lecture-room was certainly somewhat original. Within his renowned museum on Broadway the largest apartment was designated " The Lecture-room/' Per- formances were given in it every evening, and almost every afternoon. In reality it was the theatre of the establishment, and was devoted to the representation LECTURE INSTITUTIONS. 1 1 7 of stage -plays. To have called it a theatre would not have suited Mr. Barnum's purpose. His patrons being composed of sober-minded young men from the country, and innocent young maidens from the city, it was necessary that everything should be exceedingly proper to please the tastes of youth in search of amusement and ladies desirous of edification. The theatre was therefore described on the bills as The Moral Lecture-room. The propriety indicated by the title being illustrated by playing sensation dramas, and charging twenty-five cents additional to the lower seats. Between the acts of a drama it was customary to exhibit a giant, a dwarf, or any malformed being suitable for the purposes of a moral show. The old style of conducting public lectures in the United States is very like that of this country, but the system of later date is in accordance with the go-a- head character of the times, and is markedly different. There are venerable institutions on the other side of the Atlantic, which have their analogues in similar institutions on this side. For instance, in Boston, looking up a Court off Washington Street, may be noticed a large gloomy doorway, with a barber's shop on one side of it. Bostonians know the building in the rear as the Lowell Institute. They who desire solid information can obtain tickets gratis at certain seasons of the year, and at the Lowell Institute attend a series of lectures on Geology or Comparative Anatomy, delivered by the learned, eloquent, and estimable Pro- fessor Agassiz, or a course on the History of the United States, by one of its most erudite historians. The place, the audience, the lectures, and the general arrangement, remind one of Gresham College in Lon- don. Like that, the Lowell Institute was endowed by a ii8 THE GENIAL BHOWMAK wealthy founder, and lectures have to be delivered in it at fixed periods of the year. Then, there is the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, the gift of an Englishman to the people of the United States, and unfortunately partially destroyed by fire a few years ago. Lectures on scientific and historic matters are given there after the model of those delivered on Friday evenings in Albemarle Street, at the Royal Institution. In New York there is the Cooper Institute, endowed like the Lowell one in Boston. There is no Polytechnic, with a Professor Pepper presiding over it in the States at present ; but there are Lyceums, Athenaeums, and Literary Societies without end. Then, every town has its hall for lectures, concerts, and entertainments. Not dingy little rooms, with broken and dirty seats, built over a market place, or down a back street, but large, elegant, and well-situ- ated buildings, many of them exceedingly capacious, and fitted up with a stage and scenery for the use of any travelling dramatic company. In the cities of the West, the popular hall is usually on the first or second floor, the basement of the building being occu- pied by stores. The smallest town will have its hall, while in most there are two or three, each being the result of private enterprise and not the property of the city corporation. Churches and chapels are frequently used for lecture halls in the Western cities. Even in Brook- lyn, the sister city of New York, the celebrated Rev. Henry Ward Beecher allows his very large church to be hired for political and amusing lectures. I remember visiting it one evening to hear the well- known Mr. George Francis Train lecture on his travels. He spoke from the pulpit, wearing a blue coat with GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN. 119 brass buttons, and was as voluble in his narrative of what he had done, seen, and suffered, as he was violent in his denunciations of England. Though perched up in a pulpit he joked without re- straint ; telling funny stories and outrivalling a dozen Baron Munchausens in details of adventure, to the in- finite delight of the crowded and hilarious con- gregation, who applauded, laughed, and cheered the veracious lecturer most uproariously. Mr. Train is a quotable specimen of the American gentleman of universal information to whom I have referred in a previous paragraph. On the evening of his lecture in Brooklyn, he adverted to the condition of the army of China, and having been astonishingly statistical all the evening, one of his audience took occasion to interrupt him to inquire what was its numerical strength. Mr. Train replied without a moment's hesitation, giving the number to a unit. Whereupon his interrogator re- quested to know the number of guns. So many thousand, so many hundred " and five ; but two of them are cracked" replied Mr. Train, with charming accuracy. Could the whole of the Ordnance Department together have answered as rapidly and as precisely with regard to the guns of the army of Great Britain ? It is not to be wondered at that the clergyman who preaches at the most popular church in Brooklyn Plymouth Church as it is called should sanction its being occasionally let out for amusing lectures. The church altogether is conducted on the paying principle, and the seats in it are annually put up at public auction to the highest bidders. As a lecturer, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher is most eloquent, fas- cinating, and humorous, abounding in apt illustra- 120 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN'. tion and felicitous anecdote. He lets himself out to lecture at so much per night, and being highly at tractive, receives quite as large an honorarium as Mr. Barnum. Political lecturers of high renown, like the Hon- ourable Horace Greeley, Mr. Wendell Phillips, or Henry Ward Beecher; literary lecturers of cele- brity like Mr. George Curtis, Mr. Emerson, Dr. Holmes, Mr. E. P. Whipple, and Mr. Saxe, together with a few of the more prominent of the professedly humorous lecturers, always command their one hun- dred dollars per night. Mr. Beecher, I believe, has now raised his fee to two hundred dollars. Lecturers so well known are in constant request throughout the lecture season, and in the Western cities receive higher pay than they can obtain in most of the Eastern ones. Everything in America is managed by agency. The Lyceums, which are very much the same in cha- racter as our Mechanics' Institutes or Athenaeums, are supplied with lecturers by means of committees and agents. The Lyceums of various cities extending over a large tract of country band together, form an organization, correspond with one another, and appoint a central committee, with a manager or agent, whose business it is to look up the most attractive lecturers and arrange with them for a tour, so arranging that the talented gentleman engaged shall not waste time, nor be subjected to unnecessary travel, but go on from the place at which he lectured on Monday night to the town at which he has to display his eloquence on Tuesday. The lecturer experiences very little trouble except that inseparable from travel. All his arrange- ments are made by the society's agent. When he arrives at where he is to lecture, there is sure to be TREATING A LECTURER. 121 a committee-man waiting to receive him, and when he has finished his lecture and received his fee, he will be either escorted to his hotel by some of the chief members of the Lyceum, or invited to sup and sleep at a private home, where he will be regarded as a lion and treated more as a member of the family than as a stranger. Samaritans, however, are not always found among lecture committees, or if Samaritan in their intentions they do not carry out those intentions agreeably. Some six years ago I accompanied a popular lecturer to a lecture in the large schoolroom of a church not far from the city of New York. The time of year was mid-winter, the night was bitter cold, snow was on the ground, frozen into sharp little spiculse of ice, the stars were steel-like in their frosty splendour, and the wind seemed to be disposed to stab wherever it could strike. My friend the lecturer hoped to find some warm refresh- ment when he arrived at the schoolroom. There was water only. When the lecture was over, we were in- vited by the gentleman who paid the fee, to go across to his house, be introduced to his family, and partake of something to eat and drink. Visions of a large fire and a hot supper were before us as we hastened shiveringly across the road. Our host ushered us into a library where there was no fire, and invited us to admire the splendid binding of the volumes in his very elegant bookcases while he left us to order the repast. Freezingly we waited. When the good things did arrive, accompanied by the family, we found our appointed supper to consist of a plate of apples and a jug of cold cider ! The gentleman was a vege- tarian and a philosopher. W T ithin the last few years a successful attempt has 122 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. been made in New York to organize a central agency on a large scale for the supply of lecturers all over the United States. It is entitled " The American Literary Bureau," and has its office in Nassau- street, in the neighbourhood where all the newspapers are published. In one of its prospectuses the following business-like statement is made : " In enlarging the field of operations, it is proposed to introduce the principle of co-operation, as calculated to be of essential service to lyceums. By that system the hundreds of lecture-committees in the Eastern, Central, and Southern States will be enabled to obtain the best talent at the lowest rates ; they will also secure a higher average of lectures. Other benefits will follow upon the plan, and Lyceums cannot further their own interests better than by putting themselves into immediate correspondence with the Bureau, when all necessary explanations will be made in full. Lec- turers will readily perceive that their interests will not less be subserved by our system, and we invite all who have not already registered their names on our books to do so at once. Address to American Literary Bureau, P.O. Box 6701." Since issuing the prospectus from which I have quoted, the Bureau has extended its operations, and under the superintendence of its energetic manager, Mr. James K. Medbery, has pushed its operations to the farthest West, and enrolled amongst its members a most efficient army of lecturers. Nor has it re- stricted its energies to enlisting American lecturers only, but has been enterprising enough to secure talent from Europe. In a circular recently issued, it advertises that it has upon its books the Rev. Prof. W. C. Richards, A.M. " Terms, 50 dollars and ex- THE AMERICAN LITERARY BUREAU. 123 pcnscs (with modifications). Subject { Thomas Hood the Humorist and Humanist/ " The Bureau is also in possession of " Z. R. Sanford, Esq. Terms, 50 dollars (with modifications) ; reading and recitation of his original poem, ' Fringes/ The Rev. Robert Laird Collier, of Chicago. Terms, 100 dollars. Subject ' The Personality of a Poet/ J. O. Miller, the eloquent Orange County Farmer, a highly reputed humorist. Terms, 50 dollars (with modifications). Subjects ' Model Husband/ < Model Wife/ Then it an- nounces a gentleman whose " modifications" are stated in the advertisement thus " George M. Beard, M.D. Terms, 75 dollars to 30 dollars. Subjects f Our Crimes against Health ;' ' Stimulants and Narcotics/ ' But it is not stated whether the eloquent doctor charges 75 dollars for the " Crimes" and 30 dollars for the " Stimulants," or vice versa. Not content with the purely American element, the Bureau notifies that it has on its books Mr. Henry Nichols, of London, Mr. William Parsons, of Ireland, and Mr. Justin McCarthy, " the editor of the London Morning Star," who is prepared to lecture on " The Progress of Democratic Ideas in England," " The British Parliament," " Goethe, Schiller, and Moliere." Nothing can be done in the United States, any more so than elsewhere, without the society of the ladies. The "American Literary Bureau" therefore informs the world that it has at its disposal Miss Julia Crouch, of Mystic, Connecticut, and that the topic of her lecture is "Wisdom and Folly." No price is named for her services, nor any statement made or not whether she permits " modifications ;" but as she is comparatively new in the market, and has not attained that position which warrants her i2 4 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. being quoted in the price-list of lecture stock, the following extracts from newspapers are appended to the advertisement : "Miss Crouch makes a very graceful appearance before an audience, with elegant form, full medium height, very fair com- plexion, keen, sparkling black eyes, and as sweet a voice as we ever heard on any platform." Norwich Bulletin. " She bows gracefully and modestly to her audience, and pro- ceeds in a most unexceptionable manner, with elegance of move- ment as well as eloquence of utterance." New London Democrat. " She speaks with an agreeable, clear, silvery voice." Mystic Pioneer. " We regard her as a successful platform speaker. She has received calls as a lyceum lecturer, that will be nattering to her talents." Hartford Post. Nothing like the " Bureau" exists, I believe, in this country. Yet why it should not, and why the lecturer is not better known and better paid amongst us than he is it might be difficult satisfactorily to explain. Perhaps we have not come up to the time ; perhaps we have passed beyond it. Let a thorough system of national education be introduced, and the thirst for knowledge would then perhaps cause the itinerant higher-class lecturer to be as popular and as well rewarded in the towns of Lancashire and York- shire, and the villages of Somerset and Devon, as he now is on the banks of the Mississippi, or on the shores of the great American lakes. In devoting so much space to the Lyceum lecture system in the United States, I have been actuated by two motives : first, to render its peculiarities perfectly understood by the reader as distinct from that style of lecturing which approximates more closely to the calling of the showman ; and secondly, because it was with Lyceum committees that Artemus Ward had to make some of his earliest arrangements as a lecturer. THE LYCEUM LECTURER. 125 He who engages himself to the "Bureau/' or who lets himself out to Lyceums, has to manage his busi- ness in a manner different from that in which he con- ducts it if, to use an expressive American phrase, he lectures " on his own hook." Then, unsupported by committees, and unassisted by the working members of a literary society, he has to fight his own way and rely upon his popularity, his business talent, the efficiency of his agent, and the excellence of his bills and posters. The timid man, he who is indisposed to exertion, and he who dreads anything which resembles show- manship, will remain passive and thoroughly re- spectable in the hands of the committees. He who has more daring, more energy, and who cares only to make money, no matter what people may have to say about his showman's artifice, will " go it on his own hook." Perhaps, if the purse of the latter be not too heavily laden, or his speculative spirit be not suffi- ciently bold, he will dispose of himself to a capitalist for a certain time, either for a stipulated sum, or on equitable sharing terms. As a rule, in the States the lecturers who are simply lecturers fit into the ma- chinery of the Lyceums, while those who approach in character to entertainers, trust to their own powers of management, or share with some one whom they con- sider to be capable to manage them. Artemus Ward tried in turns each of these three systems. A lecturer or entertainer who makes up his mind to be his own showman in America, must have no compunctions of conscience about puffing himself to the world. There must be no hiding his light under a bushel, nor any disinclination to work. An agent to go ahead and make his arrangements is absolutely indispensable. To get a good one is a matter of 126 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. difficulty, for the best are always engaged by those who know their value. Here in England the nature and office of an agent to a showman is by no means thoroughly understood. There is the same lack of enterprise in the manage- ment of a show with us that we develop in many other respects. In the United States the agent or business manager has, or should have, unlimited power to do as he pleases conceded to him by his principal. He should be of gentlemanly manner, that he may herald his attraction fittingly ; he should be a man of tact, that he may make his moves properly ; he should be a man of education, so that when he is asked in a Western office to sit down and write the notice which he desires, he should acquit himself skilfully, and in accordance with the politics of the paper ; he should understand human nature, so that in dealing with people he should accomplish his aims with ease, never bore and never disgust. Above all, he should be used to the business, know the country in which he is travelling, have a constant fund of good humour, and a zealous determination to make his lecturer or his show successful, no matter what difficulties he has to overcome, nor what impediments may present themselves. If he knows all the railway conductors, so much the better for his trips along the rails ; if he is acquainted with all the newspaper editors and reporters, so much the more easy for him to get hold of the long end of his great lever, the press ; and if he is known at all the hotels, and friendly with all the hotel clerks, so much superior will be his boarding and his lodging, and so much the more will he be reckoned up as a specimen of that valuable class of people who are said to "know their way about/' THE AGENT. 127 There are a few minor accomplishments which it is just as well that he should possess. For instance, he should be able to take a hand at poker, be a good judge of a cigar, and know where to buy the best, have a fair knowledge of how to handle a cue, and able to drive a buggy. It is also advisable that he should have no politics, and be always enthusiastically of the same opinion as the company amongst whom he happens to be thrown. That which he privately thinks, and his ideas on things generally, ac- quired during his roving career, he can lay aside in the storehouse of his brain until his agency is over. Having secured his agent, the show-lecturer will be careful about the manner and matter of his bills and posters. If at all fitted for his vocation, he will un- derstand the value of pictures on his bills. The advantage of pictorial placards is much better under- stood in America than it is here. We are beginning to comprehend it in the lithographs, plain and coloured, which our theatrical artists and showmen cause to be displayed in shop windows. When Mr. Sothern came over from the States, he brought with him, and did not forget to use, the pictorial style of advertising. He was adventurous enough even to astonish the Parisians with it in the year of the great Paris Exhibition. Mr. Boucicault, arch-priest as he is in the Showman's Temple, has always appreciated the value of a sensation scene pictorially rendered on his show-bills ; while Mr. Toole, in his ideas of the pic- turesque in announcements, would almost induce a stranger to believe that he had learned his business on the other side of the Atlantic, whither he has never been. 128 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. Artists of considerable talent, and business firms with great resources at their command, undertake the production of pictorial bills in America. There are some offices, as, for example, Clarry and Reilley's in New York, and the Cincinnati Enquirer in Cincinnati, that have presses of immense size for pictorial printing. Where in England we should have to use four sheets of paper to print a large woodcut, at the offices I have named they use but one. Our "double-crowns" and " double-demies" sufficed for America in the days of her youth. When she had grown up to be old enough to have territories, the paper-makers provided her with a "mammoth" sheet; and when she grew to be the owner of California, and had gold-mines of her own, they made her a sheet of paper larger still, and called it a " mastodon." I am told that now the Pacific railway is completed, the paper-makers are coming out with a " megatherium." The pictorial printing establishment in New York, to which I have just referred, is a marvellous place for the supply of illustrated mural art. In a vast re- pository of racks are stored up engraved woodcuts of every possible variety of show. If you are a giant or a dwarf, and wish to make a show of yourself, you have only to pay a visit to Spruce-street, and you will be able to take your choice of an engraved block of any kind of dwarf or giant you desire to represent yourself to be. There you are drawn and engraved. In the process of printing it is very easy to give you nationality. Wishing to exhibit yourself as a martial giant the printers will print you in blue if you desire to be an American, in red if you wish to be British, or in a prismatic mixture if you intend to be Asiatic in your origin. Perhaps instead of being a giant or THE "NORTH STAR." Plate VL From New York to Aspinwall. MONTGOMERY STREET, SAN FRANCISCO. This is the principal street of San Francisco ; the ground upon which it stands was, not many years ago, part of the bay of the same name. ME. SAENUM. 129 a dwarf yourself, you are simply a showman and a lec- turer. You have a " living skeleton/' an " erudite pig/' or a " woolly fish," which you are anxious to exhibit and to lecture upon. In Spruce-street the printers will show you in an instant woodcuts of living skeletons ol every degree of thickness, erudite pigs of every breed of swine, and woolly fishes with or without dorsal and ventral fins, just as you please. They keep on hand professors of conjuring, well cut out in flowing robes for the trick of " The bowls of water," and in evening dress to illustrate simple tricks with hats and coins. They have wood-blocks of horses illustrative of every " trick-act" a circus horse was yet known to perform, while for the purposes of menageries they possess cuts of all the larger animals, including the hippopotamus taking its bath, and a monster elephant fanning itself with a lady's fan. Mr. Barnum set the example, and all showmen in the States follow it, to have a lecture explanatory of whatever curiosity they may please to exhibit. A lecturer or two, able to describe an object of interest, and tell a few good stories about it, was always found to be of advantage in the Old Museum of New York. Perhaps a few peripatetic lecturers exercising their vocation at certain times, or on certain days, would help to throw a little life into the British Museum in London, rendering the collection more interesting to visitors, and more useful to the public at large. " What ! make a show of it ?" exclaims some good old, horror-stricken conservative. Yes, decidedly. It is a show. Nine-tenths of its visitors go to see it as a show. Amongst its trustees there should be at least one good showman. Some of Mr. Barnum's exhibitions with lectures, K i 3 o THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. were characteristic of the showman and his show. When he could arrange for the curiosity to lecture on itself, and he, in a reflected sense, theory and example, he seldom omitted to seize the chance. Had he a " Lightning Calculator;" he would cause that " Light- ning Calculator" first to lecture on himself, and then illustrate his electric powers of arithmetic. Had he a " double-voiced" singer, the vocalist with the dual gift had first to lecture on his peculiar endowment, and then proceed to illustrate it. One of Mr. Barnum's happy thoughts in this way, was to catch a female spy and cause her to relate her adventures. Her name was Miss Cushman a good and great name in the States. She had played the part of a spy in one division of the Union Army, and coming to New York, offered herself as a curiosity. Engaged by Mr. Barnum, she appeared on his stage in the " moral lecture room." After giving a brief lecture on the nature and office of the military spy in general, she narrated her own adventures in particular. Her pre- liminary matter was delivered while she wore very pretty and fashionable attire. Then she exhibited herself in military disguise, and changed her dress to illustrate her exploits. People just then were very bellicose in their way of thought, and the lecture by a female spy harmonizing well with the times, the show became popular. In Boston, Mr. Barnum had an exhibition of another sort, in which he employed the services of an adventurous lady. The Bostonians had been anxious to see a live whale. Mr. Barnum had one captured expressly for them. It was a white one, and not so large as to be unmanageable. An ex- tensive glass tank was built up for it in the exhibition BARNinTS LIVE WHALE. 131 room ; the tank being filled with sea-water pumped up from Boston Harbour. The whale made a pretty sight from the gallery around the hall, whence the visitor could look down upon the tank and see the creature take its circular swim by way of exercise, An interesting lecture on the whale was easily con- cocted, but every school-girl knew as much about whales as the lecturer did. Hence something more Mas desirable to give interest. It required genius to find that something. Mr. Barnum found it. Attach a car to the whale, harness the whale to the car. Dress up a pretty woman as a nymph or sea-goddess, and do circus business inside the tank. That was the idea which struck the mind of the whale's owner, and the idea which he fully carried out. Unfortunately, the whale became disgusted with being subjected to so much degradation, and ingloriously died, committing suicide by eating some broken glass. The show lecturer and the Lyceum lecturer are usually gentlemen of very different temperament. He who adheres strictly to the orthodox proprieties of the rostrum, and who exalts the didactic as being far above the entertaining, is, as a matter of course, less jovial and more saturnine than the lecturer who is not afraid of being heralded with a picture poster, whose aim is solely to make money, and who thoroughly believes in the world's thirst for knowledge being subordinate to its hunger for enjoyment. Before he adopted the profession of a lecturer himself, Artemus Ward amusingly caricatured a species of the didactic order of lecturers not un- commonly met with on the Western Continent. The burlesque is so apt as to merit quotation : K 2 132 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. " Poplar Lecturs as thay air kalled, in my pinion air poplar humbugs. Individooals, who git hard up embark in the lecturin' bizniss. Thay cram thair- selves with hi soundin frazis, frizzle up their hare, git trusted for a soot of black close and cum out to lectur at 50 dollers a pop. Thay haint over stockt with branes, but thay hav brass enuff to make suffishunt kettles to bile all the soap that will be required by the ensooin sixteen ginerashuns. Peple flock to heer um in krowds. The men go becawz if s poplar and the wimin folks go to see what other wimin folks have on. When its over the lecturer goze and regales hisself with oysters and sich, while the people say, ' What a charming lectur that air was/ etsettery, et- settery, when 9 out of 10 of um don't have no moore idee of what the lecturer sed than my kangaroo has of the sevunth speer of hevun." CLINTON HALL. '33 CHAPTER IX. NEW YORK BABES IN THE WOOD AT CLINTON HALL. CLINTON HALL, New York, has been the test- V^ ground for many an ambitious young lecturer. Some of the most talented and best qualified lecturers of America have spoken therein. Some of the very worst have spoken there also. It is not a very grand place, nor is it a remarkably cheerful one. It was in Clinton Hall, on the 23rd of December, 1 86 1, that Artemus Ward, having already made his position in New York as an author, endeavoured to ascertain his popularity as a lecturer. The hall stands upon memorable ground. It occu- pies a portion of the site of the old Astor Place Opera House, the scene of the fatal riot on the occasion of Mr. Macready, the tragedian, performing there some years ago. On the ruins of the Opera House has arisen a large building, which includes within its walls Clinton Hall and the Mercantile Library. The neigh- bourhood is the very focus of information. Close by is the magnificent Astor Library the great public library of reference; not far distant is the Mission House, whence America disperses religious knowledge over the world ; and very near at hand is the Cooper Institute, an admirable establishment, wherein, through I 3 4 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. the benevolence of its charitable founder, the working classes have excellent facilities afforded them for self- education. Singular people have presented themselves before the public at the Cooper Institute and in Clinton Hall. It was in the lecture-room of the Cooper Institute that the Davenport Brothers astonished and perplexed New York with their ingeniously- contrived mechanical Cabinet ; and, in 1 860, the walls of New York were placarded with posters announcing that Miss Adah Isaacs Menken would lecture on " The Age of Irre- pressibles" in Clinton Hall. Poor Artemus Ward used to shiver when reference was made to his own appearance at Clinton Hall. How he came to lecture there may be briefly told. While writing for the newspaper in Cleveland, the hard- worked young reporter was called upon in the course of his duties to visit the different exhibitions which chanced to come into the town, and to attend the performances of the various nigger-bands, circuses, and itinerant entertainers. He noticed the peculiarity of humour which seemed most to please the public, made notes of the characteristics of the several enter- tainers, and was observant of what an audience re- quires in order to be amused, and what it is in an entertainment that is superfluous or simply wearisome. He readily perceived how much vitality there is in a good old jest, and how a venerable joke, if properly retailed by "Mr. Merryman" in the ring, or by " Bones'-' upon the minstrel platform, still retains its power of raising a hearty laugh. And more than this, he listened to some of his own humorous fancies, that had done duty in the newspaper for which they THE COMIC LECTURER. 135 were originally written and in fifty other papers into which they had been copied, served up again by the clown or the wandering jester, and received with acclamation by hilarious crowds. Having thus heard, seen, and noticed, he went home and reflected. To make jests for the printer brought but poor pay. Besides, the printer required the jest of to-day to be different from the one of yesterday, and he would want a new one altogether on the morrow. The viva voce diffuser of jokes received good pay. A limited stock-in-trade sufficed, and the brain-work was comparatively slight. That which passed current as a good thing in the town visited yesterday could be re-uttered in the town stopped at to-day, and could be used for the delectation of the multitude every day for the next year to come. Of such nature were the reflections which stimu- lated Artemus Ward to be a lecturer. He desired to accumulate money not only that he might see the world and better his own position, but also that he might secure to his mother the old homestead in Maine, and aid those whom he most loved. News- paper work was not likely to produce him affluence, nor even sufficient means to carry out his most moderate ambition. But, to start in life as a comic lecturer, and achieve success in the new calling, was to effect that which in a land like America offered every prospect of eventually realizing a competency. Poor Artemus was acquainted with many of his literary brethren who possessed great talent, but made little money. He was also familiar with showmen innumerable whose intellectual gifts were few, but who could load their caravans with golden dollars and paper the inside of their shows with bank-notes. His 136 TEE GENIAL SHOWMAN. experiences as an amateur did not inspire him with a wish to adopt the stage as a profession, any more than did his lack of musical ability prompt him to become a concert-giver. As a comic lecturer he thought that he might succeed ; and he thought so with increased belief, the more that he was assured by many of. his friends that the idea was a happy one, and one which he should lose no time in carrying out. But all the friends of the ambitious young reporter were not equally as encouraging. There were sure to be some amongst those immediately around him who were disposed to act the part of the wet blanket, ready to quench the fire of energy, and say, " Don't do it, you will certainly fail." What man of enterprise has ever lacked that order of friends ? America does not produce them as plentifully as do some older countries, but they are indigenous to every soil ; and too fre- quently where they think they act the serviceable part of the break to the train, are only the log of wood placed across the rails to throw the locomotive off the track. In some prefatory notes prefixed to the little volume in which Artemus Ward's Lecture on the Mormons has been printed, I have briefly detailed a conversation I had with the lecturer himself in Cleve- land, relative to his first attempt at composing a humorous lecture. The idea of becoming a public entertainer had taken possession of his mind, and the nature of the entertainment he should give had been made matter of study. From time to time he had jotted down on slips of paper things that he had heard, and quaint fancies as they had suggested them- selves, with the intent of working up the whole into an entertainment. One day he chanced to go out, HIS COMIC LECTURE! 137 and leave his slips of paper on his desk. Mr. Gray, the proprietor of the paper, happened to notice them, and perceiving their peculiarity, inquired for what they were intended, and in what way they were to be used in the columns of the Plaindealer. The gentlemen in the office could not inform him. Artemus himself was therefore appealed to for information. " Those slips are notes for my comic lecture/'' was his reply. His comic lecture ! That the " city editor" should turn lecturer seemed beyond the belief of his interrogator, who, when assured that the assertion had been made in all gravity, and that the intention was seriously enter- tained, burst into laughter. "They laughed at me, and called me f a fool/' said Artemus, relating the circumstance to me some years after, in the course of an evening ramble through the town in which it had occurred four or five years previously. When a man believes that he sees his way clearly before him, and has even a moderate amount of self- reliance in his character, laughter is not very likely to stop him from journeying on the road which he has chosen, and take another path, however much it may cause him to halt, and be a little more anxious to read the finger-posts correctly. Artemus allowed those who laughed at him to remain behind in Cleve- land, while he, with the idea of the comic lecture germinating in his brain, went on to New York. Stimulating in the extreme to the mind of the emulative man who has not met with many great rebuffs from Fortune, is the air of a great city. To 138 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. him who has ventured much, and been defeated often, it is air that is full of noxious vapour an atmosphere with the density of carbonic acid and a pressure which no barometer can measure ; but to the sanguine and the fortunate, to him who has friends to cheer, hope to inspirit, and unchecked courage to sustain him, the air which plays around multitu- dinous chimney-pots, and vibrates incessantly with the hum of labour, the roar of the Bourse, and the clash of contending citizens, is invigorating, bracing, and full of food to ambition and to energy. To the wearied and the disappointed it is an air which withers like the blast of the Sirocco. To him who feels assured that with exertion he can win his way, it is air which seems to be meat, drink, and life itself, like the breezes I have felt blow around me on the hill-tops of Australia and on the grand mountains of Oregon. " Going out gunning in the country is all very well, and makes a man feel good," remarked to me one of the editors of a Milwaukie paper, who was fond of using long words. "But I like to get back into the city among people; that's what refocillates me most." In the great city of New York, Artemus Ward found himself surrounded by those who were more disposed to stimulate than to discourage. Down at PfaflPs cellar the young Bohemians, who were positive in their knowledge, and the old Bohemians, who were oracular in their wisdom, alike told him that he had only to turn comic lecturer in order to make a fortune. As to the matter of the lecture, and the order of its arrangement, there was considerable dif- ference of opinion. Some offered to suggest the MY SEVEN GRANDMOTHERS. 139 subjects to be treated on ; while others, kinder still, obligingly tendered to write the whole lecture. But Artemus had his own opinions. Among various schemes which had suggested them- selves to him was that of a string of jests combined with a stream of satire, the whole being as uncon- nected, and one jest having as little relation to another, as the articles in any number of a comic periodical. He could not distort his countenance for the impersonation of character, like Dr. Valentine had done, or as Winchell or Alfred Burnett did. He had not the pulpit prestige of Mr. Beecher, nor the Maine Liquor Law background of Mr. Gough. He had no panorama, nor anything to exhibit but himself; therefore, to become a humorous lecturer with simply humour, fun, and satire blended together to form the basis of his entertainment, appeared to him to be that for which he was most fitting, and that which would best suit the public. The lecture was put together with great care and with studied incoherency in some of its details. A burlesque upon a lecture rather than a lecture in the accepted meaning of the term was precisely that which it amounted to. Then came the great difficulty what should be its title ? " I first thought of calling it My Seven Grand- mothers/' said he, in reply to my inquiry of how it was he came to choose the title at length deter- mined upon. There was nothing whatever in the lecture about " Seven Grandmothers " but the title seemed a droll one. The young lecturer had studied the showman's art long enough to know how much there is in a name. At the suggestion of a friend, and not able to think of anything better at the time, he ultimately 140 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. concluded to entitle his lecture, The Babes in the Wood; and with the borrowed name of the well-known story which has charmed so many children, and formed the groundwork of so many pantomimes, the lecture was introduced to the public. Prominently brilliant among the group of bright young men who at that time occasionally illumined the gloom of the vault under the street down at Pfaff 's was Mr. Frank Wood. He was one of the contribu- tors to Vanity Fair, and one who to considerable literary talent added the qualifications of a most fasci- nating manner and a sympathetic, amiable disposition. Artemus Ward and Frank Wood became great friends. Artemus required a nurse for his " Babes in the Wood," in the form of an agent, who should pioneer the way and attend to the business affairs. Frank Wood offered himself in that capacity, and strongly urged his friend to let him start off and engage Clinton Hall for the experimental attempt at lec- turing. To this Artemus would not agree. He wished to try the country first. Outlying the neigh- bourhood of New York are numerous small towns, each having its lecture-hall, its literary institute, and its share of lecture-loving people. The " Babes" were as yet in their cradle, and the idea of Artemus was, that during their infancy, and while gaining strength to step out of the perambulator and walk alone, it would be much better to train them in country air than to exercise them in the streets of the metropolis. Mr. Frank Wood consented to the arrangement, and the " Babes" were taken for their first airing to the small town of Norwich, near New London, in the adjacent State of Connecticut. Nervous in temperament, and manifesting anxiety BABES IN THE WOOD. 141 in all that he did, Artemus Ward made his debut as a lecturer inder strong excitement. I have been told by one who heard him that his audience, though they laughed immoderately, thronged around him when the lecture was over to sympathize with him, believing that the purposely odd and dis- jointed character of the lecture was the result of in- tense nervousness on the part of the lecturer, and that in his confusion of thought, he had forgotten to tell them anything about the Babes. He had never intended to. Therein lay the gist of the great joke which constituted the so-called lecture. Having made a trip through the rural districts, and taken a hasty run out West, the lecturer returned to New York, and adopted Mr. Frank Wood's advice to try his fortune at Clinton Hall. New York is not a city wherein the inhabitants are much given to attending lectures. Boston and Phila- delphia are far more disposed to yield their patronage to him who mounts the rostrum. In New York the people prefer the theatre, circus, or museum, to the hall in which there is nothing to see, nor any- thing but the voice of a lecturer to hear. They love excitement, and find no great pleasure in sitting still to be talked to for an hour together, unless the speaker is a man of very great renown, or has some remarkable eccentricity combined with his powers of eloquence. Such being the character of the people of New York, neither Artemus Ward nor his agent had any good reason to anticipate great financial re- sults from the experiment they were about to make. Something better than did result they certainly expected. The lecture was well advertised, and the poster on r 4 2 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. the walls was quaint and striking. The latter con- tained very few words, but they were displayed in large roughly-formed white letters on a black ground, and underneath them a printed slip informed the passer- by where the event was to take place and the time of opening the doors. Throughout his lecturing career, down to the last week of his delivering a lecture in London, Artemus Ward used that same form of poster. The following is a copy on a very reduced scale : .AKTEMUS WILL SPEAK A PIECE. Every boy and girl who looked at the bill knew that the notification conveyed by it was to the effect that a recitation was to be delivered, or an oration made. Just as in England we use the phrase " Christmas-piece" to express something intended to be read or recited at Christmas, so to " Speak a Piece" means, in the phraseology of New England, to deliver orally something in prose or poetry, either as a lesson or by way of amusement. It is a favourite mode of expression with children, and for that reason seemed to harmonize admirably with the idea of the " Babes in the Wood." Wherever it was seen posted on the walls, in the various towns of the United States, it invariably succeeded in attracting attention, eliciting a smile, and in causing the reader to be aware that the lecture to which it referred was intended to be quaintly humorous. The night of the twenty- third of December came SPEAKING A PIECE. 143 about, and the doors of Clinton Hall when opened had to be half-closed again immediately, for snow and rain were descending together in a mixed shower, and a fierce wind drove the sleet into the entry and numbed the fingers of the money-taker, who sat waiting for the crowd which resolutely refused to come. The poor " Babes," though young in their career, already experienced the melancholy fate assigned to them in the ballad. " Frank Wood was one babe and I was the other," said Artemus, referring to that night of disappoint- ment " These pretty babes, with hand in hand, Went wandering up and down, But never more could see the man Approaching from the town." There were a few faithful friends, and a few daunt- less and curiosity-led members of the public, who, re- gardless of the pitiless inclemency of the night, ven- tured to make their way through the storm. The lecture was given, and thoroughly enjoyed by the scanty audience. When the lecturer and his agent came to make up the accounts the next day, the pecuniary loss amounted to a little more than thirty dollars. It was the first and the last lecture which Artemus Ward gave in Clinton Hall. But the snow- storm alone was to blame. New York can do well in the way of snew-storms occasionally. And the pride which a patriotic Ameri- can can manifest in the snowy capabilities of his country is well illustrated by the story of the " Down- Eastern" youth who was shown in England a picture of a snowy landscape painted by a Royal Academician. " I guess that's not much like our snow," said he. i 4 4 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. " Our snow is whiter and thicker, and colder-looking, and a deal more snowy than that." " But do not you consider the snow excellently painted ?" observed the exhibitor of the picture. ee Painted!" replied the American with disgust. ' ' Do you call that painted ? I hev a brother who is an artist tu home, and he painted a snow-picture so natural, sir, that my sister-in-law left her little baby a-sleeping in the cradle close by it, and when she got back to the room, the child was frozen to death. Our snow's too cold to bear painting. No sir, nohow." EMBALMING THE DEAD. 145 CHAPTER X. WASHINGTON AND PHILADELPHIA AN EM- BALMER'S WORKSHOP SIXTY MINUTES OF AFRICA IN THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE. Beautiful Art of Embalming the Dead taught in Six Lessons" That among other strange announcements attracted my attention as I hurried into Washington on business one day during the war. The ghastly oddity of the notice struck me forcibly ; but Washington was full of horrors just then, and there were other public intimations quite as startling. My engagements took me to Willard's Hotel, where the military element was so strongly represented, that the house I had pre- viously known as the most fashionable hotel in the city had become more like a barracks than an hotel. Soldiers were thronging round the doorway, officers in blue uniform and wearing cocked hats were parad- ing themselves in the passages, and the clank of military heels resounded through the various rooms on the basement floor. Troops were departing down the Potomac by steamer, to be landed at Aquia Creek, and detachment after detachment was being sent across the Long Bridge to see service on the fields of Virginia. Washington was a scene of confusion, ex- citement, dissipation, and uproar. Never at any time L 146 THE GENIAL BHQWXJUSL the most delightful of cities, it was just then one of the most annoying and most to be avoided. The hotel- clerk at Willard's knew me. When I asked him to be accommodated with a bed, he apolo- gized for not being able to offer me anything better, and told me that there was only one to spare, but that it was in a room where there were seventeen others. I went to look at it. There was a soldier in a state of mad intoxication on the bed next to the one that I could have. I declined the offer, and made up my mind to seek rest elsewhere. Passing out of the hotel, I was roughly pushed against a gentleman who was just entering. As our faces met I recognized an old acquaintance, whom I had last seen in New York, and who was then practising the profession of a dentist. Before he took to dentistry he had been a showman, and had managed very successfully a thea- trical company. " What are you doing in Washington ? " I asked, after the first few words of recognition had been spoken. " Have you come down to set the edge of the soldiers' teeth before going to battle, that they may have no trouble in biting cartridges ?" " No. I have given up dentist work for a time/' was his reply. "I am an embalmer." " And have you an establishment in Washington ?" "Yes, come and see me. My place is on the Avenue. Here is my card." He gave it me, and I read " Dr. Charles Brown, Embalmer of the Dead. Office, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C." I had my lodgings for the night to look after before doing any thing else. So taking the card I promised to call and see the doctor on the following day. DR. BROWN AT WORK. 147 Next morning, having transacted the business which had taken me to Washington, I strolled up Pennsylvania Avenue in search of the embalming establishment. I found it to be on the right side of the road going up towards the Capitol. The purpose to which it was devoted was advertised by means of a sign painted in very large letters, Some men were taking in the body of a dead soldier as I arrived. Dr. Brown being within, I readily obtained admis- sion. There was a large apartment on the level of the street, the windows of which were so obscured as to baulk the curious gaze of the world without. At one time the apartment had apparently been used for a store-room. But at the period of my visit it was turned into a workshop, where the artists of death were busily employed. Placed on tressels in various parts of the room were the bodies of eleven soldiers, some already embalmed and others waiting for the doctor to commence or complete the process. Business was brisk with the doctor, and Virginia was yielding him a plentiful harvest. In the United States it is a common and a loving desire to wish to preserve the body of a dead relative or friend, that it may be inspected months or years after death. Americans resemble the old Egyptians rather than the ancient Romans in preferring the mummy to the cinerulent urn. Even at home in their great cities, when death comes among them, it is customary to call in the services of the embalmer. In the ceme- teries of Greenwood and of Mount Auburn there are many silent inhabitants resting on stone shelves, their faces still visible and wearing something like the look of life, though the bunches of flowers placed upon their breasts have long since faded into little heaps of L i 148 THE GENIAL brown vegetable matter. During the war, brave sons fell in battle, and heroic husbands left the soft delights of home to uphold their flag on the contested field, and there met their death : fond mothers and heartbroken wives wished to see the faces of those they had loved and lost wished the dead body to be sent to them a thousand miles away wished to show their children once again the features of him who had once made home so happy. To them the embalmer stepped kindly in, as the last friend whom Death had left them to appeal to, as one who was more kindly than the grave-digger and more consola- tory at the moment than even the priest. Hence the reason of the strange signs in the city of Wash- ington. The doctor was appropriately dressed for his busi- ness. His assistants were around him. He had just completed the injection of a body recently brought to him to be preserved, and was contemplating his work with satisfaction. " This is very different to being a showman, and far more unpleasant," I remarked. " How came you to take up with so strange an occu- pation ?" " It is my patent," he replied. " The process is the new French one. I went to Paris. Got it there. Have patented it for the States. I have another esta- blishment in the West, and I grant licences for the use of the invention. See," said he, showing me a figure which appeared to be life-like, the face having been carefully painted, and glass eyes having replaced those which death had made dim for ever ; " See ! here is a sample of my process. The flesh is almost as hard as stone. Listen \" FLESH LIKE STONE. 149 He tapped the neck of the embalmed body very lightly with the handle of a paint-brush. The flesh was firm and resonant. " Your establishment is very well situated on the Avenue," I observed. " But it is rather noisy. What is that noise overhead?" " Oh, they have a German dancing-room up over me, and they are giving a few lessons. The noise you hear at the side and underneath comes from the printing-offices, where they are rolling off the evening paper." Thus was death wedged in between life in the Washington of half-a-dozen years ago. Neither Dr. Brown nor his assistants seemed to be struck with the horribly grotesque situation of their place of work. They worked as artists, and regarded the re- sult of their work with similar satisfaction to that with which a painter surveys his finished picture, or a sculptor examines his completed statue. If the doctor remembered his Horace, Debemur morti nos nostraque must have been a quotation which now and then occurred to his mind. Having seen all that the doctor had to show me, I said to him " The Browns seem to me to be a very singular race. They follow eccentric pursuits. There is Artemus W r ard, who represents himself to have been a showman like you. I understand that his proper name is also Browne. Is he any relative ?" " None whatever," replied the doctor. " He is a very clever fellow though. As I passed through Phila- delphia yesterday I noticed that he is to lecture there this evening. If you are going to New York, you should stop on your way and hear him." 150 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. The opportunity was one for which I had waited. Since I had last seen Artemus Ward in Louisville, about eighteen months previously, I had read and heard of the great reputation he had acquired as a humorous lecturer; but though I much wished to listen to him, no chance had offered itself for my so doing. In Dr. Brown's establishment I found a gen- tleman who also wished to gratify a similar curiosity. We arranged to go to Philadelphia together. The train was delayed on its way from Baltimore. When we arrived at the Musical Fund Hall in Locust-street, where the lecture was to be given, we found the hall to be already crowded. Every seat was occupied, and there was that descrip- tion of standing-room left which has been denned as no place for standing. Thanks to the courtesy of Mr. Beckett, the keeper of the hall, we were politely conducted into a recess on one side of the platform, where through an opening we could hear very well, and have a full view of the faces of the audience, together with a side view of the face of the lecturer. Artemus Ward had just stepped out on the plat- form. A tall, thin, gentlemanly-looking young man, with light- coloured flowing hair. He wore a black coat, such as in this country we wear in the morning, but which in the States passes as dress ; his waistcoat was a white one, and in his hand he carried a roll of white paper, which he twitched nervously in the course of his lecture. The subject of the lecture, according to the bills, was Sixty Minutes in Africa; but the matter of the discourse, as I afterwards ascer- tained, was pretty much the same as that of the Babes in the Wood, only that in Philadelphia, the abolition SIXTY MINUTES IN AFRICA. 151 of slavery being a favourite topic, anything about Africa was likely to be acceptable. Besides, the Babes had already visited Philadelphia, and Artemus was careful not to take them twice to the same place, unless specially desired, In the book to which I have already referred, " The Lecture on the Mormons," I have detailed the charac- teristics of Artemus Ward's style of lecturing, and given a sample of the matter of which it was com- posed. Any one of his lectures, previous to the deli- very of the Mormon one, was simply a heterogeneous collection of jests, interspersed with dry, witty, telling observations on the fashions and follies of mankind, and pleasantly wrapped-up sarcasms on the social and political topics of the day. The humour of the lec- ture was more in the man than in his matter his manner of saying a funny thing was infinitely more funny than the thing itself. Yet his lecture was a grand display of mental fireworks, corruscation suc- ceeding corruscation, and rocket-flight following rocket- flight, without giving his audience time to think or to count the number of pieces. While people listened they laughed. When all was over they wondered what it had been which they had lis- tened to. When the next morning came about they remembered several of the good things and laughed at them again. The lecture that evening at the Musical Fund Hall was illustrated by a map of Africa, suspended at the back of the platform. Except in the way of bur- lesque the map was useless. The lecturer commenced by telling his audience that his subject was Africa, and alluding to some of the natural productions of that country. When he told them that it produced 152 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. " the red rose, the white rose, and the neg-roes," they yelled with laughter. When he informed them that in the middle of the continent there was what was called " a howling wilderness/' but that for his part he had never heard it howl nor met with any one who had, the audience shouted approbation ; and when he told them that he believed the African to be his brother, but was not so fond of him as to believe him to be his sister, wife, and grandmother as well, the political feelings of the good Philadelphians were roused, and while the demo- crats laughed uproariously, the republicans enjoyed the joke with a dubious smile. All that the lecturer said was spoken by him as though it fell from his lips without premeditation ; but from the position in the hall which I chanced to occupy, I could notice that his eyes were keenly fixed upon his audience, and that he carefully watched the manner in which every sen- tence was received. Never once did he allow his countenance to relax from its continuous grave ex- pression. Instead of joining in the laughter he had elicited, he seemed to wonder whence it had arisen, and to be slightly annoyed that he could not speak without being laughed at. Some of his audience entered into the spirit of the affair, and were bois- terously merry. Others attempted to be critical, but occasionally manifested their vexation at not being able to grasp anything which they could criticise, and some there were who simply regarded the speaker as a lunatic, and seemed ashamed that they had caught themselves laughing at him like the rest. There were nearly two thousand people in the hall, the heat was oppressive, and the merriest of the audience began to feel that ceaseless laughter was very WE MEET AGAIN. 153 hard work. Artemus Ward perceived that lie had spoken long enough ; and having just told a funny story, the scene of which was in Massachusetts, sud- denly changed his tone of voice and said " Africa is my subject. You wish me to tell you something about Africa. Africa is on the map. It is on all the maps of Africa that I have ever seen. You may buy a good map of Africa for a dollar. If you study it well, you will know more about Africa than I do. It is a comprehensive subject too vast, I assure you, for me to enter upon to-night. You would not wish me to 1 feel that I feel it deeply, and I am very sensitive. If you go home and go to bed it will be better for you than to go with me to Africa !" Thus abruptly, and without any further peroration, the lecture was brought to a conclusion. When it was over I sought an interview with the lecturer in his dressing-room, and reminded him of our last meeting, far away in Kentucky. Recognition was im- mediate, and reception cordial. " Come home with me to my room at the Conti- nental," said Artemus. I accepted the invitation and went, two or three of the lecturer's friends accompanying us. We had not been long in conversation when half-a-dozen young men entered the room and saluted the host fami- liarly. " Glad to see you, boys ! Sit down take some Bourbon," said Artemus. " I hope you have had as good a house this evening as I have had/ 7 " Pretty good," was the reply. " But we didn't have many clergymen. You must have had the best of us in the best seats, as the people in the 154 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. gallery said, when the hankey-pankey fellow threw all the bon-bons out of the hat to upper-tendom in the dress circle, and flung them the wrapping- paper." Our little party in the small room on the fourth or fifth floor of the Continental Hotel, soon became con- vivial. In a very few minutes I ascertained that the last arrivals were the principal members of Carncross and Dixey's Minstrel Company. A negro minstrel organization as famous in Philadelphia as that of the Bryants was in New York, or that of Morris, Pell, and Trowbridge in Boston. The gentlemen of the minstrel company were well- known to Artemus Ward. Their entertainment had often afforded him amusement, while his jokes had largely assisted them in amusing the public. One of the number had been present at the Musical Fund Hall that evening, to take notes of anything new in the lecture admitting of being dovetailed into the minstrel enter- tainment. Anxious to meet Artemus, the minstrels had left their own establishment in haste. One of them in his hurry had failed to wash from his face all traces of the burnt-cork colouring he had worn during the concert. His friends noticed the omission, and some little banter passed. As the professional gentleman wiped away the black marks, he remarked to his host " I am as bad as Mr. B was, when being thanked by Queen Victoria." Anything about Queen Victoria being very interest- ing on the other side of the Atlantic, the gentleman was asked to explain. "I was once in the company of the H A STOEY OF THE STAGE. 155 Theatro/' said he. " Mr. B was the manager. The play was The Wicked Wife. Queen Victoria was present. The manager had to see her Majesty out of the box ; and his stage-manager advised him to hurry up with his washing, lose no time, and be ready to bow her Majesty to her carriage. Mr. B is a little hard of hearing. He made haste, and was rubbing his eyes dry when be met the queen coming out of her box. ' Ah ! Mr. B / said her Majesty, ' I see that this beautiful piece has made you cry, as it has me. I have been to see it four times/ The manager did not catch the words. ' Your Majesty/ said he ' what did you please to remark ?' ' I said that it is a very beautiful piece, and do not wonder that it made you cry/ ' Yes, your Majesty/ replied Mr. B , ' I washed in a hurry, and haven't got the soap out of my eyes/ n The story was well received. It was one which I had not previously heard, and made a note of accordingly. The gentlemen appeared to be inclined to per- sonality in their jests, and one of them accusing the other of a want of veracity in his statements, the accused retorted on the accuser by saying " You bring to my mind the fellow who went stumping the country down South. He made a speech, and he told more lies in the course of it than there are bricks in Philadelphia. Presently he paused and said, { Now, gentlemen, what do you think V ' Think/ said one of his audience ' Well, I reckon that if you and I were to stump this part of Alabama together, we would tell more lies than any other two men in the State, sir; and Fd not say a word myself during the whole time, sir." 156 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. Thus pleasantly did the visitors of the evening beguile the time. There were some very talented artistes among the members of Carncross and Dixey's band. Philadelphia has always of late years main- tained a good band of minstrels, some of them being no less enterprising than humorous. Perhaps one of the best performances ever given by minstrels in the Quaker City was that wherein they burlesqued a famous exploit of which the hero was the well-known comedian, Mr. John Brougham. Before narrating what Mr. Brougham did, or telling how the minstrels burlesqued it, let me explain the meaning of the word " Gag" a most expressive word in the lips of the showman. Used as a noun, " a gag" is something added to another thing to give it factitious and extrinsic interest ; and used as a verb, "to gag" a show is to devise or invent some method of raising excitement which shall either be for the purpose of starting the show well on its way, or for drawing attention to it anew if its interest is diminish- ing. The good gag is the showman's happy thought. To the professor of the art of showing, the theory and practice of " gagging" are matters of serious study. Practised skilfully, so as to whet the appetite of the public without cloying it, success is the result. In the hands of a bungler there results disgust in the mind of the public. Mr. John Brougham had for some time been play- ing in a favourite piece at New York. His popu- larity was very great. He had played the same piece at Philadelphia, where also his popularity was assured. Philadelphia arid New York are nearly as far apart as London and Birmingham. Could not Mr. John Brougham's celebrity be greatly increased, and con- A MINSTREL FEAT. 157 siderable money made by his playing the same piece in both the cities on the same night ? That was the " gag" which struck the mind of Mr. Brougham, or of his speculative and clever friend, Mr. Jarrett. When an American conceives a happy idea he carries it into execution immediately, if possible. So the two performances were settled upon, advertised, " worked-up," and accomplished. The play was acted in New York to a crowded house. A ferry- boat was waiting to convey actors, actresses, and as many of the New York audience as chose to accompany them, across the river to Jersey city. There, an express train, with many cars attached, re- ceived its histrionic cargo of passengers, and at once started at full speed through the State of New Jersey to Philadelphia. And at Philadelphia the same play was again played that had already been performed that evening in New York, the same artists performing, and among the spectators being many who, not being content with having seen the performance in one city, had rushed a hundred miles to see it repeated in another. Always on the look-out for novelty, so good a " g a g" was n t to be lost sight of by the Philadelphian minstrels. Forthwith a poster was issued to the effect that Mr. John Brougham's feat would be entirely eclipsed by the gentlemen of the " burnt-cork opera/' There are two halls at opposite extremities of Phila- delphia. The minstrels pledged themselves to give the same performance at both on one and the same evening, and to make the journey from one to the other, as well as convey as many of the audience as were willing to accompany them in wheelbarrows ! A plenteous supply of wheelbarrows was obtained, ir8 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. and the enterprise successfully conducted. Phila- delphia, usually one of the most demure, respectable, and properly conducted of cities, never swerved more from its pleasant routine of dulness than when it turned out some thousands of order-loving citizens to yell " Bravo I" to a troupe of artistes, dressed in black, their faces being black also, but their shirt collars large and white, their musical instruments in their hands, and they themselves whirled through the town at full speed in a score or two of wheelbarrows. The gag answered its purpose. One of the wheelbarrows was required to take the proceeds to the bank. Artemus Ward, and Carncross and Dixey's Min- strels, seated in the little room at the Continental Hotel, soon became engaged in a warm discussion relative to the respective professional merits of the sons of Mr. E. P. Christy, the once famous minstrel of New York. And now, as I write, gentlemen in London are contending as to who has the right to the title of Christy Minstrels in this country. None of the sons of him who bore the name are, I believe, alive at the present time. Not more suggestive of melancholy reflection to Hamlet is the tossing up out of the grave the skull of poor Yorick, than was it to see in a law court of the United States the last ghastly jest in which the originator of the Christy's figured. In a fit of mental aberration Mr. E. P. Christy threw himself out of the window of his house. He was not killed by the fall, but lived for many weeks, and while so living made a will. After his death, the amount of property he left being large, that will was contested. It was argued that the injury he had sustained by the fall from the window had been of a nature to render it AT A NEGRO BALL. 159 impossible that he should afterwards be of sound mind. In his life-time he had often handled dex- terously the "bones" with which mock Ethiopians are apt to " discourse most eloquent music." After his death two of his own bones the atlas and axis of the cervical vertebrae, were tossed across the table from lawyer to lawyer in the course of the discussion in open court as to whether or not the injuries they evidenced were not sufficient to prove that the nervous system of the poor minstrel must have been so affected as to have rendered him incapable of per- forming any legal act or deed. " I had a new joke in my lecture to-night/' said Artemus, addressing his Philadelphian friends. " If George Christy had known I was going to have it he would have travelled a hundred miles to borrow it for his own. As it is I have no doubt that he will have it telegraphed to him to-morrow. But come, gentlemen, I hear there is a nigger-ball on to-night. Shall we go ?" The suggestion was received with satisfaction. One of the company was in possession of a sufficient number of tickets of admission, and we started for a distant part of the city where the ball was to take place. I think that the name of the building was Mahogany Hall, but in this I may be mistaken. "Whether in freedom, or in slavery, the negro race are proverbially fond of gaiety, and especially delight in dancing. The ball to which we went was given by the dark- coloured population of Philadelphia, and no white people were admitted unless they were well- known to the committee. About a hundred negroes and nearly that number of negresses were present when we arrived. The coloured gentlemen were dressed in evening costume, and seemed for the most 160 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. part to be waiters from the various hotels. Their partners were arrayed in finery of the most glaring description. Some of the ladies were attired in white muslin, with bright blue ribands of most unnecessary length. One lady of very large proportions, and of remarkably broad features wore a ruby-coloured dress with flounces to it of a gamboge tint ; and there was one who had attired herself in bloomer-costume, her coat, or outer-dress being of lilac-colour with a gilt leathern cincture round her waist, and her pantalettes of a pale green hue, terminating in white frills. Every lady had a bouquet of enormous size ; and both ladies and gentlemen bore evidence in the beads of moisture on the face to the spirit with which they were entering into the enjoyment of the evening. For a band, the ball committee had provided six instruments, two violins, one double-bass, a flageolet, a flute, and a triangle. Perched on an elevation at the end of the room was the master of the ceremonies calling out the figures of the dance. " Ladies chain Hurry up, ladies. Set and turn partners Gen'elmen what are you 'bout, mind dti figgers. Fus' couple 'vance ! Now retire Vance again. Now de gen'elmen returns. Lebe lady on de left of de op'site gen'elman. De ladies cross to op'site sides. Hurry up hurry up ! Change de corners. Gen'elmen pass -'tween de ladies. Now de ladies cross. De gen'elmen go back to dare places fus'rate, bery fWrate ! Now fus' copple set and turn Good. Now den, all of ye, de last figger I" The embalming office of Dr. Brown in the morning the negro ball in the evening. In the life of the showman, light and shade are often so contrasted ! Plate VII. THE CHINESE THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO. CELESTIAL ACTORS AND CONJURERS. From Sketches in Artemus Ward^s Portfolio. The lower group represents one part of the entertainment in a Chinese Marriage ceremony. A QUAINT TELEGRAM. I(5l CHAPTER XL ACROSS THE CONTINENT A STRANGE TELEGRAM THE BABES TRANSFORMED INTO GHOSTS. THERE came a message by telegraph three thou- sand five hundred miles or thereabouts across the American continent. On its way that message had passed through the mining camps of California, darted over the summit of the Sierra Nevada, traversed the region of the silver miners, and passed into a little wooden house on one side of Main-street, Salt Lake City, where it paused for a few minutes to take fresh electric breath, and then to start out anew from the city of the Mormons to hasten onwards to the city of New York. When the telegraph clerk received it at his lonely little office in Salt Lake City, he wondered at its meaning. Months afterwards he told me that he did. His business was to send it onwards. Onwards it went, flying over the heights of the Rocky Mountains and swooping down upon the boundless plains of Colorado and Nebraska. Indians attired in furs and feathers, the face painted, the hand grasping a spear, looked up at the wires as the mes- sage hastened on ; prairie dogs, each standing on his own little mound of earth, yelped as the message flew by ; and the backwoodsman resting on his axe in the M i6 3 THE GENIAL SHOWMAN. newly-felled clearing, amused himself by thinking what those wires, of which the wind of the wilder- ness was making an ^Eolian harp, could possibly be transmitting from one side of America to the other. When the message arrived at New York it read thus : " Thomas Maguire, Opera House, San Francisco, Cal., to Art emus Ward, New York City. What will you take for forty nights in California r" The verb