The Complete Works of Artemus Ward Part 60

THE NEGRO QUESTION.

I was sitting in the bar, quietly smokin a frugal pipe, when two middle-aged and stern-looking females and a young and pretty female suddenly entered the room. They were accompanied by two umberellers and a negro gentleman.

"Do you feel for the down-trodden?" said one of the females, a thin-faced and sharp-voiced person in green spectacles.

"Do I feel for it?" ansered the lan'lord, in a puzzled voice--"do I feel for it?"

"Yes; for the oppressed, the benighted?"

"Inasmuch as to which?" said the lan'lord.

"You see this man?" said the female, pintin her umbreller at the negro gentleman.

"Yes, marm, I see him."

"Yes!" said the female, raisin her voice to a exceedin high pitch, "you see him, and he's your brother!"

"No, I'm darned if he is!" said the lan'lord, hastily retreating to his beer-casks.

"And yours!" shouted the excited female, addressing me. "He is also your brother!"

"No, I think not, marm," I pleasantly replied. "The nearest we come to that color in our family was the case of my brother John. He had the janders for sev'ral years, but they finally left him. I am happy to state that, at the present time, he hasn't a solitary jander."

"Look at this man!" screamed the female.

I looked at him. He was an able-bodied, well-dressed, comfortable-looking negro. He looked as though he might heave three or four good meals a day into him without a murmur.

"Look a that down-trodden man!" cried the female.

"Who trod on him?" I inquired.

"Villains! despots!"

"Well," said the lan'lord, "why don't you go to the willins about it?

Why do you come here tellin us n.i.g.g.e.rs is our brothers, and brandis.h.i.+n your umbrellers round us like a lot of lunytics? You're wuss than the sperrit-rappers!"

"Have you," said middle-aged female No. 2, who was a quieter sort of person, "have you no sentiment--no poetry in your soul--no love for the beautiful? Dost never go into the green fields to cull the beautiful flowers?"

"I not only never dost," said the landlord, in an angry voice, "but I'll bet you five pound you can't bring a man as dares say I durst."

"The little birds," continued the female, "dost not love to gaze onto them?"

"I would I were a bird, that I might fly to thou!" I humorously sung, casting a sweet glance at the pretty young woman.

"Don't you look in that way at my dawter!" said female No. 1., in a violent voice; "you're old enough to be her father."

"'Twas an innocent look, dear madam," I softly said. "You behold in me an emblem of innocence and purity. In fact, I start for Rome by the first train to-morrow to sit as a model to a celebrated artist who is about to sculp a statue to be called Sweet Innocence. Do you s'pose a sculper would send for me for that purpose onless he knowd I was overflowing with innocency? Don't make a error about me."

"It is my opinyn," said the leading female, "that you're a scoffer and a wretch! Your mind is in a wusser beclouded state than the poor nergoes'

we are seeking to aid. You are a groper in the dark cellar of sin. O sinful man!

'There is a sparkling fount Come, O come, and drink.'

No! you will not come and drink."

"Yes, he will," said the landlord, "if you'll treat. Jest try him."

"As for you," said the enraged female to the landlord, "you're a degraded bein, too low and wulgar to talk to."

"This is the sparklin fount for me, dear sister!" cried the lan'lord, drawin and drinkin a mug of beer. Having uttered which goak, he gave a low rumblin larf, and relapsed into silence.

"My colored fren," I said to the negro, kindly, "what is it all about?"

He said they was trying to raise money to send missionaries to the Southern States in America to preach to the vast numbers of negroes recently made free there. He said they were without the gospel. They were without tracts.

I said, "My fren," this is a seris matter. I admire you for trying to help the race to which you belong, and far be it from me to say anything again carrying the gospel among the blacks of the South. Let them go to them by all means. But I happen to individually know that there are some thousands of liberated blacks in the South who are starvin.

I don't blame anybody for this, but it is a very sad fact. Some are really too ill to work, some can't get work to do, and others are too foolish to see any necessity for workin. I was down there last winter and I observed that this cla.s.s had plenty of preachin for their souls, but skurce any vittles for their stummux. Now, if it is proposed to send flour and bacon along with the gospel, the idea is really an excellent one. If, on t'other hand, it is proposed to send preachin alone, all I can say is that it's a hard case for the n.i.g.g.e.rs. If you expect a colored person to get deeply interested in a tract when his stummuck is empty, you expect too much."

I gave the negro as much as I could afford, and the kind-hearted lan'lord did the same. I said:

"Farewell, my colored fren, I wish you well, certainly. You are now as free as the eagle. Be like him and soar. But don't attempt to convert a Ethiopian person while his stummuck yearns for vittles. And you, ladies--I hope you are ready to help the poor and unfortunate at home, as you seem to help the poor and unfortunate abroad."

When they had gone, the lan'lord said, "Come into the garden, Ward."

And we went and culled some carrots for dinner.

ARTEMUS WARD ON HEALTH.

[The following fragment from the pen of Artemus Ward was written in the last days of his illness, and was found amongst the loose papers on the table beside his bed. It contains the last written jests of the dying jester, and is ill.u.s.trative of that strong spirit of humor which even extreme exhaustion and the near approach of death itself could not wholly destroy.

There is an anecdote related of Thomas Hood to the effect that when he was just upon the point of dying, his friend, Mr. F.O. Ward, visited him, and, to amuse him, related some of his adventures in the low parts of the metropolis in his capacity as a sanitary commissioner. "Pray desist," said Hood; "your anecdote gives me the back-slum-bago." The proximity of death could no more deprive poor Artemus of his power to jest than it could Thomas Hood. When nothing else was left him to joke upon, when he could no longer seek fun in the city streets, or visit the Tower of London and call it "a sweet boon," his own shattered self suggested a theme for jesting. He commenced this paper "On Health."

The purport of it, I believe, was to ridicule doctors generally; for Artemus was bitterly sarcastic on his medical attendants, and he had some good reasons for being so. A few weeks before he died, a German physician examined his throat with a laryngoscope, and told him that nothing was the matter with him except a slight inflammation of the larynx. Another physician told him that he had heart disease, and a third a.s.sured him that he merely required his throat to be sponged two or three times a day, and take a preparation of tortoise sh.e.l.l for medicine, to perfectly recover! Every doctor made a different diagnosis, and each had a different specific. One alone of the many physicians to whom Artemus applied seemed to be fully aware that the poor patient was dying of consumption in its most formidable form. Not merely phthisis, but a cessation of functions and a wasting away of the organs most concerned in the vital processes. Artemus saw how much the doctors were at fault, and used to smile at them with a sadly scornful smile as they left the sick room. "I must write a paper," said he, "about health and doctors." The few paragraphs which follow are, I believe, all that he wrote on the subject. Whether the matter became too serious to him for further jesting, or whether his hand became too weak to hold the pen, I cannot say. The article terminates as abruptly as did the life of its gentle, kind, ill-fated author.

E.P.H.]

Ontil quite recent, I've bin a helthy individooal. I'm near 60, and yit I've got a muskle into my arms which don't make my fists resemble the tread of a canary bird when they fly out and hit a man.

Only a few weeks ago I was exhibitin in East Skowhegan, in a b'ildin which had form'ly bin ockepyied by a pugylist--one of them fellers which hits from the shoulder, and teaches the manly art of self defens. And he c.u.m and said he was goin in free, in consekence of previ'sly ockepyin sed b'ildin, with a large yeller dog. I sed, "To be sure, sir, but not with those yeller dogs." He sed, "Oh, yes." I sed, "Oh, no." He sed, "Do you want to be ground to powder?" I sed, "Yes, I do, if there is a powder-grindist handy." When he struck me a disgustin blow in my left eye, which caused that concern to at once close for repairs; but he didn't hurt me any more. I went for him. I went for him energet'cally. His parents live near by, and I will simply state that 15 minits after I'd gone for him, his mother, seein the prostrate form of her son approachin the house on to a shutter carrid by four men, run out doors, keerfully looked him over, and sed, "My son, you've been foolin round a thras.h.i.+n masheen. You went in at the end where they put the grain in, come out with the straw, and then got up in the thingumajig and let the hosses tred on you, didn't you, my son?"