THE
BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY
OF
AMERICA
BROWNE, Charles Farrar (Artemus Ward),
humorist, was born at Water ford, Me., April 26,
1834. He was educated in the public schools;
learned the printer's trade in the office of the
Skowhegan Clarion, and on the Boston Carpet Bag,
where he published his first humorous story,
a description of Skowhegan Fourth of July celebration.
He went to Tiffin, Ohio, and from there
to Toledo, where he was engaged as a compositor
and local reporter on the Commercial. Everything
he saw assumed a comical aspect, and he saw
fun everywhere, even at the funeral of a man
noted for his bitter speech, where he remarked,
"Well, after all, he makes a nice quiet corpse."
His lips were always smiling. His very looks,
with all his assumption of gravity, were provocative
of laughter. In the summer of 1858, when
twenty-four years old, he went to Cleveland to
write for the Plaindealer, and his connection with
this paper enlarged his reputation and its circulation.
His quaint and extravagant humor took
with the people, and his sober writing, masking
unexpected conceits, excited much interest and
quickened a desire to know what the next surprise
would be. It was at this time he assumed
the pseudonym, "Artemus Ward—Showman."
His first letter in that character, addressed to
the editor and written at the time to "fill space,"
was an unexpected success and gave him wide
introduction as a humorist. His peculiar spelling
was one of the original features of these letters,
but the merit of their real and kindly
humor was their attraction. The "Moral Show"
took Cleveland by storm, and scarcely a day
passed without some country reader of the Plaindealer
applying at its counting-room for a sight
of the "Kankaroo," the moral "Bares" and the
wonderful wax "figgers." After several years'
connection with the Plaindealer, he removed to
New York, and for a while was a contributor to,
and afterwards editor of, a short-lived journal,
Vanity Fair. Of this venture he said: "I wrote
some comic copy and it killed it. The poor paper
got to be a conundrum and so I gave it up." He
began his career as a lecturer Dec. 23, 1861, in
Clinton hall. New York, before a scant audience
of a few friends and some curiosity seekers.
His subject was "Babes in the Woods." This
first venture resulted in a loss of thirty dollars,
but the after ones were wonderfully successful,
as was his lecture on The Mormons and Sixty Minutes in Africa.
He visited California in
1862, delivering lectures to large audiences, and
on his return spent a few weeks in Utah,
where he obtained material for his popular panoramic
lecture on Mormonism. In 1866 he visited
England, and was received at the "Literary Club,"
London, and welcomed by Charles Reade
and in literary circles generally. His lectures
at Egyptian hall, which began in November,
were continued without interruption for eleven
weeks, when his health, which had begun to
fail him before he left home, became so bad that
in February, 1867, he was obliged to seek rest on
the Island of Jersey. He failed to recuperate,
and when he attempted to return home he
breathed his last at Southampton, England,
and his remains were carried back to America,
and placed beside those of his father in the
cemetery at Waterford, Me. While in England he
was a frequent contributor to Punch, and his
papers, Artemus Ward in London, published
in that periodical, contain some of his most
graphic and humorous sketches, notably liis first
contribution. At the Tomb of Shakespeare. It
may be said of him that he made the world
happier by his living in it. Laughter is a good
medicine, and he compounded it with skill and
prescribed it with unfailing success. He provided
in his will for an asylum for printers and
for the care of their orphan children; for the
education of a young man in whom he had become
interested, and for his widowed mother, for
whom during his life he showed an affection
