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DUPlICATt 
 
 ARTEMUS WARD'S 
 LECTURE. 
 
 fAs delivered at the Egyptian Hall, London.J 
 
 EDITED BY HIS EXECUTORS, 
 
 T. W. ROBERTSON & E. P. HINGSTON. 
 
 WITS NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS FROM TSE PANORAMA. 
 
 LONDON : 
 JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 G. W. CARLETON & CO., BROADWAY. 
 
 1869. 
 
 (All right* reserved.) 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 G. W, CARLETON & CO., 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
R6& 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Portrait of Charles F. Browne. 
 
 From bust by Geflowski ..... To face title. 
 First Announcement of the Lecture .... 7 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 By T. W. ROBERTSON 9 
 
 Artemus Ward as a Lecturer. 
 
 Prefatory Note by E. P. HINGSTON .... 19 
 
 THE LECTURE. 
 
 By Artemus "Ward ...... 57 
 
 Proscenium (with the curtain down) ..... 58 
 
 The Steamer "Ariel" . . . . . . . 74 
 
 Montgomery Street, San Francisco . . . .78 
 
 Virginia City, Nevada ....... 82 
 
 Plains between Virginia and Salt Lake . . . .86 
 
 Part of Salt Lake City. 
 
 Viewed from a distance ...... 93 
 
 Salt Lake City. 
 
 From the heights behind it . . . .95 
 
 212:% 
 
COXTENTS. 
 
 The Salt Lake House . 
 
 Maix Street, Salt Lake City 
 
 The Coach to Salt Lake 
 
 The Mormon Theatre . 
 
 Main Street, Salt Lake City 
 
 Upper Part of Main Street 
 
 Brigham Young's Palace 
 
 Heber C. Kimball's Harem 
 
 Tabernacle and Bowery 
 
 Foundations of the Temple 
 
 Foundations of the Temple— continued 
 
 The Temple as it is to be . 
 
 Great Salt Lake 
 
 Great Salt Lake — continued 
 
 Curtain (interval for refreshments) 
 
 The Endowment House 
 
 Entrance to Echo Canyon 
 
 The Indians on the Plains 
 
 Our Encounter with the Indians . 
 
 The Rocky Mountains . 
 
 The Rocky Mountains Scenery 
 
 The Plains of Colorado 
 
 Crossing the Plains. 
 
 An Emigrant Caravan 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 104 
 107 
 110 
 116 
 121 
 125 
 128 
 133 
 140 
 143 
 145 
 149 
 152 
 155 
 158 
 161 
 164 
 167 
 171 
 175 
 177 
 181 
 
 183 
 
 
CO.VTE.Yrs. vii 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 The Prairie ox Fire ....... 187 
 
 The Prairie on Fire — continual ..... 189 
 
 Brigham Young at Home ...... 192 
 
 The Proscenium (with the curtain down) .... 197 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The "TIMES'' Critique upon the Lecture . . . .201 
 
 Programme issued hy Artemus Ward 
 
 At the Egyptian Hall, London . . . 203 
 
 Programme issued by Artemus Ward 
 
 At Dodworth Hall, New York . . .209 
 
"PHE Lecture on the Mormons was thus announced to the 
 public of New York, when Artemus Ward first appeared 
 at Dodworth Hall : — 
 
 The Festivities at Dodworth Hall will be commenced 
 by the pianist, a gentleman who used to board in the same 
 street with Gottschalk. The man who kept the boarding- 
 house remembers it distinctly. The overture will consist of 
 a medley of airs, including the touching new ballads — "Dear 
 Sister, is there any Pie in the house ?" " My gentle Father, 
 have you any Fine Cut about you ?" " Mother, is the Battle 
 o'er — and is it safe for me to come home from Canada?" 
 And (by request of several families who haven't heard it) 
 " Tramp, tramp, tramp, the Boys are Marching." While the 
 enraptured ear drinks in the sweet music (we pay our pianist 
 nine dollars a week, and " find him " ) the eye will be 
 enchained by the magnificent green baize covering of the 
 panorama. This green baize cost 40 cents a yard at Mr. 
 Stewart's store. It was bought in deference to the present 
 popularity of "The Wearing of the Green." We shall keep 
 up to the times if we spend the last dollar our friends have 
 got. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 BY T. W. ROBERTSON. 
 
 "C^EW tasks are more difficult or delicate than to write 
 on the subject of the works or character of a departed 
 friend. The pen falters as the familiar face looks out of 
 the paper. The mind is diverted from the thought of death 
 as the memory recalls some happy epigram. It seems so 
 strange that the hand that traced the jokes should be 
 cold, that the tongue that trolled out the good things should 
 be silent — that the jokes and the good things should remain, 
 and the man who made them should be gone for ever. 
 
 The works of Charles Farrer Browne — who was known 
 to the world as "Artemus "Ward" — have run through 
 so many editions, have met with such universal popularity, 
 and have been so widely criticised, that it is needless 
 to mention them here. So many biographies have been, 
 
 B 
 
io ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 written of the gentleman who wrote in the character of the 
 'cute Yankee Showman, that it is unnecessary that I should 
 touch upon his life, belongings, or adventures. Of "Artemus 
 Ward" I know just as much as the rest of the world. I 
 prefer, therefore, to speak of Charles Farrer Browne, as 
 I knew him, and, in doing so, I can promise those friends 
 who also knew him and esteemed him, that as I consider 
 no " public" man so public, that some portion of his work, 
 pleasures, occupations, and habits may not be considered 
 private I shall only mention how kind and noble-minded 
 was the man of whom I write, without dragging forward 
 special and particular acts in proof of my words, as if the 
 goodness of his mind and character needed the certificate of 
 facts. 
 
 I first saw Charles Browne at a literary club ; he had only 
 been a few hours in London, and he seemed highly pleased and 
 excited at finding himself in the old city to which his thoughts 
 had so often wandered. Browne was an intensely sympa- 
 thetic man. His brain and feelings were as a "lens," and he 
 
INTRODUCTION, BY T. W. ROBERTSON. n 
 
 received impressions immediately. No man could see him 
 without liking him at once. His manner was straightforward 
 and genial, and had in it the dignity of a gentleman, 
 tempered, as it were, by the fun of the humorist. When 
 you heard him talk you wanted to make much of him, 
 not because he was " Artemus "Ward," but because he 
 was himself, for no one less resembled " Artemus Ward " 
 than his author and creator, Charles Farrer Browne. But 
 a few weeks ago it was remarked to me that authors were 
 a disappointing race to know, and I agreed with the remark, 
 and I remember a lady once said to me that the personal 
 appearance of poets seldom ft came up " to their works. To 
 this I replied that, after all, poets were but men, and that it 
 was as unreasonable to expect that the late Sir Walter Scott 
 could at all resemble a Gathering of the Clans as that the 
 late Lord Macaulay should appear anything like the Com- 
 mittal of the Seven Bishops to the Tower. I told the lady 
 that she was unfair to eminent men if she hoped that cele- 
 brated engineers would look like tubular bridges, or that Sir 
 Edwin Landseer would remind her of a " Midsummer Night's 
 
i2 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 Dream." I mention this because, of all men in the world, my 
 friend Charles Browne was the least like a showman of any 
 man I ever encountered. I can remember the odd half- 
 disappointed look of some of the visitors to the Egyptian 
 Hall when "Artemus" stepped upon the platform. At first 
 they thought that he was a gentleman who appeared to 
 apologise for the absence of the showman. They had pic- 
 tured to themselves a coarse old man with a damp eye and 
 a puckered mouth, one eyebrow elevated an inch above 
 the other to express shrewdness and knowledge of the 
 world — a man clad in velveteen and braid, with a heavy 
 watch-chain, large rings, and horny hands, the touter 
 to a wax-work show, with a hoarse voice, and over 
 familiar manner. The slim gentlemen in evening dress, 
 polished manners, and gentle voice, with the tone of good 
 breeding that hovered between deference and jocosity ; the 
 owner of those thin — those much too thin — white hands 
 could not be the man who spelt joke with a " g." Folks 
 who came to laugh, began to fear that they should remain 
 to be instructed, until the gentlemanly disappointer began 
 
INTRODUCTION, BY T. W.ROBERTSON. 13 
 
 to speak, then they recovered their real "Artemus," 
 Betsey Jane, wax-figgers, and all. Will patriotic Americans 
 forgive me if I say that Charles Browne loved England 
 dearly ? He had been in London but a few days when he 
 paid a visit to the Tower. He knew English history better 
 than most Englishmen ; and the Tower of London was to 
 him the history of England embalmed in stone and mortar. 
 'No man had more reverence in his nature ; and at the 
 Tower he saw that what he had read was real. There 
 were the beef-eaters ; there had been Queen Elizabeth 
 and Sir "Walter Haleiga, and Lady Jane Grey, and 
 Shakspere's murdered princes, and their brave, cruel uncle. 
 There was the block and the axe, and the armour and 
 the jewels. " St. George for merrie England ! " had been 
 shouted in the Holy Land, and men of the same blood as 
 himself had been led against the infidel by men of the same 
 brain and muscle as George Washington. Robin Hood was 
 a reality, and not a schoolboy's myth like Ali Baba and 
 Valentine and Orson. 
 
 There were two sets of feelings in Charles Browne at the 
 
i + ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 Tower, He could appreciate the sublimity of history, but, 
 as the " Show " part of the exhibition was described to 
 him, the humorist, the wit, and the iconoclast from the 
 other side of the Atlantic must have smiled at the " descrip- 
 tions." The "Tower" was a "show," like his own — 
 Artemus Ward's. A price was paid for admission, and the 
 " Aggers " were "orated." Real jewellery is very like 
 sham jewellery after all, and the " Artemus " vein in 
 Charles Browne's mental constitution — the vein of humour, 
 whose source was a strong contempt of all things false, 
 mean, shabby, pretentious, and only external — of bunkum 
 and Barnumisation — must have seen a gigantic speculation 
 realising ship loads of dollars if the Tower could have been 
 taken over to the States, and exhibited from town to town — 
 the Star and Stripes flying over it — with a four-horse 
 lecture to describe the barbarity of the ancient British 
 Barons and the cuss of chivalry. 
 
 Artemus "Ward's Lecture on the Mormons at the 
 Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, was a great success. His humour 
 
INTRODUCTION, BY T. W. ROBERTSON. 15 
 
 was so entirely fresh, new, and unconventional, it took his 
 hearers by surprise, and charmed them. His failing health 
 compelled him to abandon the lecture after about eight or ten 
 weeks. Indeed, during that brief period he was once or twice 
 compelled to dismiss his audience. I have myself seen him 
 sink into a chair and nearly faint after the exertion of dressing. 
 He exhibited the greatest anxiety to be at his post at the 
 appointed time, and scrupulously exerted himself to the 
 utmost to entertain his auditors. It was not because he 
 was sick that the public was to be disappointed, or that 
 their enjoyment was to be diminished. During the last few 
 weeks of his lecture- giving, he steadily abstained from 
 accepting any of the numerous invitations be received. Had 
 he lived through the following London fashionable season, 
 there is little doubt that the room at the Egyptian Hall 
 would have been thronged nightly. Our aristocracy have a 
 fine delicate sense of humour, and the success, artistic and 
 pecuniary, of " Artemus Ward " would have rivalled that 
 of the famous " Lord Dundreary." There were many stupid 
 people who did not understand the " fun " of Artemus 
 
1 6 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 Ward's books. In their vernacular " they didn't see it." 
 There were many stupid people who did not understand the 
 fun of Arternus Ward's lecture on the Mormons. They 
 could not see it. Highly respectable people — the pride of 
 their parish, when they heard of a lecture " upon the 
 Mormons" — expected to see a solemn person, full of old 
 saws and new statistics, who would denounce the sin of 
 polygamy — and bray against polygamists with four-and- 
 twenty boiling- water Baptist power of denunciation. These 
 uncomfortable Christians do not like humour. They dread 
 it as a certain personage is said to dread holy water, and for 
 the same reason that thieves fear policemen — it finds them 
 out. When these good idiots heard Arternus offer, if they did 
 not like the lecture in Piccadilly, to give them free tickets 
 for the same lecture in California, when he next visited that 
 country> they turned to each other indignantly, and said 
 " What use are tickets for California to us ? We are not 
 going to California. No ! we are too good — too respectable 
 to go so far from home. The man is a fool ! " One 
 of these ornaments of the vestry complained to the door- 
 
INTRODUCTION BF T. W.ROBERTSON. 17 
 
 keepers, and denounced the lecture as an imposition — 
 " and," said the wealthy parishioner, " as for the panorama, 
 it's the worst painted thing I ever saw in all my life !" 
 
 But the Entertainment, original, humorous, and racy 
 though it was, was drawing to a close ! In the fight be- 
 tween youth and death, death was to conquer. By medical 
 advice Charles Browne went for a short time to Jersey — 
 but the breezes of Jersey were powerless. He wrote to 
 London to his nearest and dearest friends — the members of 
 a literary club of which he was a member — to complain 
 that his "loneliness weighed on him." He was brought 
 back, but could not sustain the journey farther than South- 
 ampton. There the members of the beforementioned club 
 travelled from London to see him — two at a time — that he 
 might be less lonely — and for the unwearying solicitude of 
 his friend and agent, Mr. Hingston, and to the kindly sym- 
 pathy of the United States Consul at Southampton, Charles 
 Browne's best and nearest friends had cause to be grateful. 
 I cannot close these lines without mention of "Artemus 
 
1 8 ARTEMUS WARD S LECTURE. 
 
 Ward's " last joke. He had read in the newspapers that a 
 wealthy American had offered to present the Prince of 
 Wales with a splendid yacht, American built. 
 
 " It seems," said the invalid " a fashion now-a-days for 
 everybody to present the Prince of Wales with something. 
 I think I shall leave him — my Panorama ! " 
 
 Charles Browne died beloved and regretted by all who 
 knew him, and by many who had known him but a few 
 weeks ; and when he drew his last breath there passed away 
 the spirit of a true gentleman. 
 
 T. W. ROBERTSON. 
 
 London, 
 
 August ii, 1868. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD AS A LECTURER. 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 BY EDWARD P. HINGSTON. 
 
 JN Cleveland, Ohio, the pleasant city beside the lakes', 
 Artemus Ward first determined to become a public 
 lecturer. He and I rambled through Cleveland together 
 after his return from California. He called on some old 
 friends at the Herald office, then went over to the Weddel 
 House, and afterwards strolled across to the offices of the 
 PlainrfecJer, where, in his position as sub-editor he had 
 written many of his earlier essays. Artemus inquired 
 for Mr. Gray, the editor, who chanced to be absent. Look- 
 ing round at the vacant desks and ink-stained furniture, 
 Artemus was silent for a minute or two, and then burst 
 into one of those peculiar chuckling fits of laughter in wnich 
 he would occasionally indulge ; not a loud laugh, but a 
 
zo ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 shaking of the whole body with an impulse of merriment 
 which set every muscle in motion. " Here " — said he — 
 " here's where they called me a fool." The remembrance 
 of their so calling him seemed to afford him intense 
 amusement. 
 
 From the office of the Cleveland Pluindealer we continued 
 our tour of the town. Presently we found ourselves in front 
 of Perry's statue, the monument erected to commemorate 
 the naval engagement on Lake Erie, wherein the Americans 
 came off victorious. Artemus looked up to the statue, laid 
 his finger to the side of his nose, and in his quaint manner 
 remarked, " I wonder whether they called him ' a fool ' too, 
 when he went to fight ?" 
 
 The remark, following close as it did upon his laughing 
 fit in the newspaper office, caused me to inquire why he had 
 been called " a fool," and who had called him so. 
 
 " It was the opinion of my friends on the paper," he 
 replied ; " I told them that I was going in for lecturing. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 21 
 
 They laughed at me and called me ' a fool.' Don't you 
 think they were right ? " 
 
 Then we sauntered up Euclid Street, under the shade of 
 its avenue of trees. As we went along, Artemus Ward 
 recounted to me the story of his becoming a lecturer. Our 
 conversation on that agreeable evening is fresh in my re- 
 membrance. Memory still listens to the voice of my companion 
 in the stroll, still sees the green trees of Euclid Street casting 
 their shadows across our path, and still joins in the laugh 
 with Artenms, who, having just returned from California, 
 where he had taken 1600 dollars at one lecture, did not 
 think that to be evidence of his having lost his senses. 
 
 The substance of that which Artemus Ward then told 
 me, was that while writing for the Cleveland Plainclealer 
 he was accustomed, in the discharge of his duties as a 
 reporter, to attend the performances of the various minstrel 
 troupes and circuses which visited the neighbourhood. At 
 one of these he would hear some story of his own, written a 
 month or two previously, given by the " niiddlo-man " of 
 
zz ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 the minstrels and received with hilarity by the audience. 
 At another place he would be entertained by listening to 
 jokes of his own invention, coarsely retailed by the clown of 
 the ring and shouted at by the public as capital waggery on 
 the part of the performer. His own good things from the 
 lips of another "came back to him with alienated majesty" 
 as Emerson expresses it. Then the thought would steal 
 over him — why should that man gain a living with my 
 witticisms, aod I not use them in the same way myself? 
 why not be the utterer of my own coinage, the quoter of my 
 own jests, the mouth-piece of my own merry conceits ? 
 Certainly it was not a very exalted ambition, to aim at the 
 glories of a circus-clown or the triumphs of a minstrel with 
 a blackened face. But, in the United States a somewhat 
 different view is taken of that which is fitting and seemly 
 for a man to do, compared with the estimate we form in this 
 country. In a land where the theory of caste is not 
 admitted, the relative respectability of the various profession 
 is not quite the same as it with us. There the profession 
 does not disqualify if the man himself be right, nor the 
 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 23 
 
 claim to the title of gentleman depend upon the avocation 
 followed. I know of one or two clowns in the ring who 
 are educated physicians, and not thought to be any the 
 less gentleman because they propound conundrums and 
 perpetrate jests instead of prescribing pills and potions. 
 
 Artemus Ward was always very self-reliant ; when once 
 he believed himself to be in the right it was almost im- 
 posssible to persuade him to the contrary. But, at the 
 same time he was cautious in the extreme, and would well 
 consider his position before deciding that which was right 
 or wrong for him to do. The idea of becoming a public man 
 having taken possession of his mind, the next point to 
 decide was in what form he should appear before the public. 
 That of a humorous lecturer seemed to him to be the best. 
 It was unoccupied ground. America had produced enter- 
 tainers who by means of facial changes or eccentricities of 
 costame had contrived to amuse their audiences, but there 
 was no one who ventured to joke for an hour before a house 
 full of people with no aid from scenery or dress. The 
 
24 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 experiment was one which Arteinus resolved to try. 
 Accordingly, he set himself to work to collect all his best 
 quips and cranks, to invent what new drolleries he could, 
 and to remember all the good things that he had heard or 
 met with. These he noted down and strung together almost 
 without relevancy or connection. The manuscript chanced 
 to fall into the hands of the people at the office of the 
 newspaper on which he was then employed, and the question 
 was put to him of what use he was going to make of the 
 strange jumble of jest which he had thus compiled. His 
 answer was that he was about to turn lecturer, and that 
 before them were the materials of his lecture. It was then 
 that his friends laughed at him, and characterised him as 
 "a fool." 
 
 " They had some right to think so," said Arteinus to me 
 as we rambled up Euclid Street. " I half thought that I 
 was one myself. I don't look like a lecturer — do I ?" 
 
 He was always fond, poor fellow, of joking on the subject 
 of his personal appearance. His spare figure and tall stature, 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 25 
 
 his prominent nose and his light- coloured hair were each 
 made the subject of a joke at one time or another in the 
 course of his lecturing career. If he laughed largely at the 
 foibles of others, he was equally disposed to laugh at any 
 shortcomings he could detect in himself. If anything at all 
 in his outward form was to him a source of vanity, it was 
 the delicate formation of his hands. "White, soft, long, 
 slender, and really handsome, they were more like the hands 
 of a high-born lady than those of a western editor. He 
 attended to them with careful pride, and never alluded to 
 them as a subject for his jokes, until, in his last illness they 
 had become unnaturally fair, translucent, and attenuated. 
 Then it was that a friend calling upon him at his apart- 
 ments in Piccadilly, endeavoured to cheer him at a time of 
 great mental depression, and pleasantly reminded him of a 
 ride they had long ago projected through the south-western 
 states of the Union. "We must do that ride yet, Artemus. 
 Short stages at first, and longer ones as we go on." Poor 
 Artemus lifted up his pale, slender hands, and letting the 
 light shine through them, said jocosely, " Do you think these 
 
26 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 would do to hold a rein with ? "Why, the horse would laugh 
 at them." 
 
 Having collected a sufficient number of quaint thoughts, 
 whimsical fancies, bizarre notions, and ludicrous anecdotes, 
 the difficulty which then, according to his own confession, 
 occurred to Artemus "Ward was, what should be the title of 
 his lecture. The subject was no difficulty at all, for the 
 simple reason that there was not to be any. The idea of 
 instructing or informing his audience never once entered into 
 his plans. His intention was merely to amuse ; if possible 
 keep the house in continuous laughter for an hour and-a- 
 half, or rather an hour and twenty minutes, for that was the 
 precise time, in his belief, which people could sit to listen 
 and to laugh without becoming bored ; and, if possible, send 
 his audience home well pleased with the lecturer and with 
 themselves, without their having any clear idea of that 
 which they had been listening to, and not one jot the wiser 
 than when they came. No one better understood than 
 Artemus the wants of a miscellaneous audience who paid 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 27 
 
 their dollar or half-dollar each to be amused. No one could 
 gauge better than he the capacity of the crowd to feed on 
 pure fun, and no one could discriminate more clearly than 
 he the fitness, temper, and mental appetite of the consti- 
 tuents of his evening assemblies. The prosiness of an 
 ordinary Mechanics' Institute lecture was to him simply 
 abhorrent, the learned platitudes of a professed lecturer were 
 to him, to use one of his own phrases, " worse than poison." 
 To make people laugh was to be his primary endeavour. If in 
 so making them laugh he could also cause them to see 
 through a sham, be ashamed of some silly national pre- 
 judice or suspicions of the value of some current piece of 
 political bunkum, so much the better. He believed in 
 laughter as thoroughly wholesome, he had the firmest con- 
 viction that fun is healthy, and sportiveness the truest sign 
 of sanity. Like Talleyrand, he was of opinion that, " Qui 
 vit sansfolie ri est pas si sage qiCil croit." 
 
 Artemus Ward's first lecture was entitled " The Babes in 
 the Wood." I asked him why he chose that title, because 
 
28 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 there was nothing whatever in the lecture relevant to the 
 subject of the child-book legend. He replied, " It seemed 
 to sound the best. I once thought of calling the lecture 
 ' My Seven Grandmothers.' Don't you think that would 
 have been good ?" It would at any rate have been just as 
 pertinent. Incongruity as an element of fun was always an 
 idea uppermost in the mind of the western humorist. I am 
 not aware that the notes of any of his lectures, except those 
 of his Mormon experience, have been preserved, and I have 
 some doubts if any one of his lectures, except the Mormon 
 one, was ever fairly written out. "The Babes in the Wood " 
 as a lecture was a pure and unmitigated " sell." It was 
 merely joke after joke, and drollery succeeding to drollery, 
 without any connecting thread whatever. It was an exhibi- 
 tion of fireworks; owing half its brilliancy and more than 
 half its effect to the skill of the man who grouped the fire- 
 works together and let them off. In the hands of any other 
 pyrotechnist the squibs would have failed to light, the 
 rockets would have refused to ascend, and the "nine- 
 bangers " would have exploded but once or twice only, 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 29 
 
 instead of nine times. The artist of the display being no 
 more, and the fireworks themselves having gone out, it is 
 perhaps not to he regretted that the cases of the squibs and 
 the tubes of the rockets have not been carefully kept. Most 
 of the good things introduced by Artemus "Ward in his first 
 lecture were afterwards incorporated by him in subsequent 
 writings, or used over again in his later entertainment. 
 Many of them had reference to the events of the day, the 
 circumstances of the American War and the politics of the 
 Great Rebellion. These of course have lost their interest 
 with the passing away of the times which gave them 
 birth. The points of many of the jokes have corroded, 
 and the barbed head of many an arrow of Artemus's wit has 
 rusted into bluntness with the decay of the bow from which 
 it was propelled. 
 
 If I remember rightly, the " Babes in the "Wood " were 
 never mentioned more than twice in the whole lecture. 
 First, when the lecturer told his audience that the " Babes " 
 were to constitute the subject of his discourse, and then 
 
30 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 digressed immediately to matters quite foreign to the story. 
 Then again at the conclusion of the hour and twenty 
 minutes of drollery, when he finished up in this way : " I 
 now come to my suhject — ' The Babes in the Wood.' " 
 Here he would take out his watch, look at it with affected 
 surprise, put on an appearance of being greatly perplexed, 
 and amidst roars of laughter from the people, very gravely 
 continue, " But I find that I have exceeded my time, and 
 will therefore merely remark that so far as I know they 
 were very good babes — they were as good as ordinary babes. 
 I really have not time to go into their history. You will 
 find it all in the story-books. They died in the woods, 
 listening to the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech-tree. 
 It was a sad fate for them, and I pity them. So, I hope, 
 do you. Good night !" 
 
 Artemus gave his first lecture at Norwich in Connecticut, 
 and travelled over a considerable portion of the Eastern 
 States before he ventured to give a sample of his droll 
 oratory in the "Western Cities, wherein he had earned re- 
 putation as a journalist. Gradually his popularity became 
 
PREFA TORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 3 1 
 
 very great, and in place of letting himself out at so much 
 per night to literary societies and athenaeums, he constituted 
 himself his own showman, engaging that indispensable 
 adjunct to all showmen in the United States, an agent to 
 go ahead, engage halls, arrange for the sale of tickets, and 
 engineer the success of the show. Newspapers had carried 
 his name to every village of the Union, and his writings had 
 been largely quoted in every journal. It required, there- 
 fore, comparatively little advertising to announce his visit 
 to any place in which he had to lecture. But it was neces- 
 sary that he should have a bill or poster of some kind. The 
 one he adopted was simple, quaint, striking, and well 
 adapted to the purpose. It was merely one large sheet, 
 with a black ground, and the letters cut out in the block, so 
 as to print white. The reading was "Artemus "Ward 
 will Speak a Piece." To the American mind this was 
 intensely funny from its childish absurdity. It is customary 
 in the States for children to speak or recite " a piece " at 
 school at the annual examination, and the phrase is used 
 just in the same sense as in England we say " a Christmas 
 
32 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 piece." The professed subject of the lecture being that of 
 a story familiar to children, harmonized well with the droll 
 placard which announced its delivery. The place and time 
 were notified on a slip pasted beneath. To emerge from the 
 dull depths of lyceum committees and launch out as a show- 
 man-lecturer on his own responsibility was something both 
 novel and bold for Artemus to do. In the majority of in- 
 stances he or his agent met with speculators who were ready 
 to engage him for so many lectures, and secure to the 
 lecturer a certain fixed sum. But in his later transactions 
 Artemus would have nothing to do with them, much pre- 
 ferring to undertake all the risk himself. The last speculator 
 to whom he sold himself for a tour was, I believe, Mr. 
 "Wilder, of New York City, who realized a large profit by 
 investing in lecturing stock, and who was always ready to 
 engage a circus, a wild-beast show, or a lecturing celebrity. 
 
 As a rule, Artemus Ward succeeded in pleasing every 
 one in his audience, especially those who understood the 
 character of the man and the drift of his lecture ; but there 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 33 
 
 were not wanting at any of his lectures a few obtuse -minded, 
 slowly-perceptive, drowsy headed dullards, who had not the 
 remotest idea what the entertainer was talking about, nor 
 why those around him indulged in laughter. Artemus was 
 quick to detect these little spots upon the sunny face of his 
 auditory. He would pick them out, address himself at times 
 to them especially, and enjoy the bewilderment of his 
 Boeotian patrons. Sometimes a stolid inhabitant of central 
 New York, evidently of Dutch extraction, would regard 
 him with an open stare expressive of a desire to enjoy that 
 which was said if the point of the joke could by any possi- 
 bility be indicated to him. At other times a demure 
 Pennsylvania Quaker would benignly survey the poor 
 lecturer with a look of benevolent pity, and, on one occasion, 
 when my friend was lecturing at Peoria, an elderly lady, 
 accompanied by her two daughters, left the room in the 
 midst of the lecture, exclaiming, as she passed me at the 
 door, " It is too bad of people to laugh at a poor young man 
 who doesn't know what he is saying and ought to be sent to 
 a lunatic asylum I" 
 
34 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 The newspaper reporters were invariably puzzled in 
 attempting to give any correct idea of a lecture by Artemus 
 Ward. No report could fairly convey an idea of the 
 entertainment, and being fully aware of this, Artemus would 
 instruct his agent to beg of the papers not to attempt giving 
 any abstract of that which he said. The following is the 
 way in which the reporter of the Golden Era, at San 
 Francisco, California, endeavoured to inform the San 
 Franciscan public of the character of " The Babes in the 
 Wood " lecture. It is, as the reader will perceive, a 
 burlesque on the way in which Artemus himself dealt with 
 the topic he had chosen ; while it also notes one or two of 
 the salient features of my friend's style of lecturing : — 
 
 " HOW ARTEMUS WARD ' SPOKE A PIECE.' " 
 
 "Artemus has arrived. Artemus has spoken. Artemus has 
 triumphed. Great is Artemus ! 
 
 " Great also is Plate's Hall. But Artemus is greater; for the 
 hall proved too small for his audience, and too circumscribed for 
 the immensity of his jokes. A man who has drank twenty bottles 
 of wine may be called ' fall.' A pint bottle with a quart of water 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 35 
 
 in it would also be accounted full ; and so would an hotel be, every 
 bed in it let three times over on the same night to three different 
 occupants, but none of these would be so full as Piatt's Hall was 
 on Friday night to hear Artemus Ward ' speak a piece.' 
 
 "The piece selected was 'The Babes in the Wood,' which 
 reminds us that Mr. Ward is a tall, slender-built, fair-com- 
 plexioned, jovial -looking gentleman of about twenty-seven years 
 of age. He has a pleasant manner, an agreeable style, and a clear, 
 distinct, and powerful voice. 
 
 " ' The Babes in the Wood ' is a ' comic oration,' with a most 
 comprehensive grasp of subject. As spoken by its witty author, it 
 elicited gusts of laughter and whirlwinds of applause. Mr. Ward 
 is no prosy lyceum lecturer. His style is neither scientific, 
 didactic, or philosophical. It is simply that of a man who is 
 brimful of mirth, wit and satire, and who is compelled to let it flow 
 forth. Maintaining a very grave countenance himself, he plays 
 upon the muscles of other people's faces as though they were piano- 
 strings and he the prince of pianists. 
 
 "The story of 'The Babes in the Wood' is interesting in the 
 extreme. We would say, en passant, however, that Artemus Ward 
 is a perfect steam factory of puns and a museum of American 
 humour. Humanity seems to him to be a vast mine, out of which 
 he digs tons of fun ; and life a huge forest, in which he can cut 
 down ' cords ' of comicality. Language with him is like the brass 
 balls with which the juggler amuses us at the circus — ever being 
 
36 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 tossed up, ever glittering, ever thrown about at pleasure. We 
 intended to report his lecture at full, but we laughed till we split 
 our lead pencil and our short-hand symbols were too infused with 
 merriment to remain steady on the paper. However, let us pro- 
 ceed to give an idea of ' The Babes in the Wood.' In the first 
 place it is a comic oration ; that is, ic is spoken, is exuberant in 
 fun, felicitous in fancy, teeming with jokes, and sparkling as bright 
 waters on a sunny day. The ' Babes in the Wood ' is — that is, it 
 isn't a lecture or an oratorical effort ; it is something sui generis ; 
 something reserved for our day and generation, which it would 
 never have done for our forefathers to have known, or they would 
 have been too mirthful to have attended to the business of preparing 
 the world for our coming ; and something which will provoke so 
 much laughter in our time, that the echo of the laughs will rever- 
 berate along the halls of futurity and seriously affect the nerves of 
 future generations. 
 
 " The 'Babes in the Wood' to describe it, is — Well, those who 
 listened to it know best. At any rate they will acknowledge with 
 us that it was a great success ; and that Artemus Ward has a 
 fortune before him in California. 
 
 " And now to tell the story of ' The Babes in the Wood ' — But we 
 will not, for the hall was not half large enough to accommodate 
 those who came ; consequently Mr. Ward will tell it over again at 
 the Metropolitan Theatre next Tuesday evening. The subject will 
 again be ' The Babes in the Wood.' " 
 
PREFA TORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON 37 
 
 Having travelled over the Union with " The Babes in the 
 "Wood " lecture, and left his audiences everywhere fully " in 
 the wood " as regarded the subject announced in the title, 
 Artemus "Ward became desirous of going over the same 
 ground again. There were not wanting dreary and timid 
 prophets who told him that having " sold " his audiences 
 once, he would not succeed in gaining large houses a second 
 time. But the faith of Artemus in the unsuspecting nature 
 of the public was very large, so with fearless intrepidity he 
 conceived the happy thought of inventing a new title, but 
 keeping to the same old lecture, interspersing it here and 
 there with a few fresh jokes, incidental to new topics of the 
 times. Just at this period General McClellan was advanc- 
 ing on Bichmond, and the celebrated fight at Bull's Bun 
 had become matter of history. The forcible abolition of 
 slavery had obtained a place among the debates of the day, 
 Hinton Bowan Helper's book on " The Inevitable Crisis " 
 had been sold at every bookstall, and the future of the negro 
 had risen into the position of being the great point of dis- 
 cussion throughout the land. Artemus required a very 
 
38 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 slender thread to string his jokes upon, and what better one 
 could be found than that which he chose ? He advertised 
 the title of his next lecture as " Sixty Minutes in Africa." 
 I need scarcely say that he had never been in Africa, and 
 in all probability had never read a book on African travel. 
 He knew nothing about it, and that was the very reason he 
 should choose Africa for his subject. I believe that he 
 carried out the joke so far as to have a map made of the 
 African continent, and that on a few occasions, but not on 
 all, he had it suspended in the lecture -room. It was in 
 Philadelphia and at the Musical Fund Hall in Locust Street 
 that I first heard him deliver what he jocularly phrased to 
 me as "My African Revelation." The hall was very 
 thronged, the audience must have exceeded two thousand in 
 number, and the evening was unusually warm. Artemus came 
 on the rostrum with a roll of paper in his hands, and used 
 it to play with throughout the lecture, just as recently at the 
 Egyptian Hall, while lecturing on the Mormons, he in- 
 variably made use of a lady's riding- whip for the same 
 purpose. He commenced his lecture thus, speaking very 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 39 
 
 gravely and with long pauses between his sentences, allow- 
 ing his audience to laugh if they pleased, but seeming to 
 utterly disregard their laughter. 
 
 " I have invited you to listen to a discourse upon Africa. 
 Africa is my subject. It is a very large subject. It has 
 the Atlantic Ocean on its left side, the Indian Ocean on its 
 right, and more water than you could measure out at its 
 smaller end. Africa produces blacks — ivory blacks — they 
 get ivory. It also produces deserts^ and that is the reason 
 it is so much deserted by travellers. Africa is famed for its 
 roses. It has the red rose, the white rose, and the neg-rose. 
 Apropos of negroes, let me tell you a little story." 
 
 Then he at once diverged from the subject of Africa to 
 retail to his audience his amusing story of the Conversion of a 
 Negro, which he subsequently worked up into an article in the 
 Savage Club Papers, and entitled " Converting the Nigger." 
 Never once again in the course of the lecture did he refer to 
 Africa, until the time having arrived for him to conclude, 
 and the people being fairly worn out with laughter, he 
 
4 o ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 finished up by saying, " Africa, ladies and gentlemen, 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 for a dollar, and 
 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, 
 I 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." 
 
 The joke about the " neg-rose " has since run the gauntlet 
 of nearly all the minstrel bands throughout England and 
 America. All the " bones," every " middle-man," and all 
 " end-men " of the burnt-cork profession have used Artemus 
 "Ward as a mine wherein to dig for the ore which provokes 
 laughter. He has been the " cause of wit in others," and 
 the bread-winner for many dozens of black-face songsters — 
 " singists " as he used to term them. He was just as fond 
 of visiting their entertainments as they were of appropriating 
 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 41 
 
 his jokes ; and among his best friends in New York were the 
 brothers Messrs. Neil and Dan Bryant, who have made a 
 fortune by what has been facetiously termed — " the burnt- 
 cork-opera." 
 
 It was in his " Sixty Minutes in Africa " lecture that 
 Artemus "Ward first introduced his celebrated satire on the 
 negro, which he subsequently put into print. " The 
 African," said he, " may be our brother. Several highly 
 respectable gentlemen and some talented females tell me 
 that he is, and for argument's sake I might be induced to 
 grant it, though I don't believe it myself. But the African 
 isn't our sister, and wife, and uncle. He isn't several of our 
 brothers and first wife's relations. He isn't our grandfather 
 and great grandfather, and our aunt in the country. 
 Scarcely." 
 
 It may easily be imagined how popular this joke became 
 when it is remembered that it was first perpetrated at a 
 time when the negro question was so much debated as to 
 
 D 
 
42 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 have become an absolute nuisance. Nothing else was talked 
 of; nobody would talk of anything but the negro. The 
 saying arose that all Americans had "nigger-on-the-brain." 
 The topic had become nauseous, especially to the Democratic 
 party ; and Artemus always had more friends among them 
 than among the Republicans. If he had any politics at all 
 he was certainly a Democrat. 
 
 War had arisen, the South was closed, and the lecturing 
 arena considerably lessened. Artemus "Ward determined 
 to go to California. Before starting for that side of the 
 American continent, he wished to appear in the city of 
 New York. He engaged, through his friend Mr. De Walden, 
 the large hall then known as Niblo's, in front of the Niblo's 
 Garden Theatre, and now used, I believe, as the dining- 
 room of the Metropolitan Hotel. At that period Pepper's 
 Ghost chanced to be the great novelty of New York City, 
 and Artemus Ward was casting about for a novel title to 
 his old lecture. Whether he or Mr. De Walden selected 
 that of "Artemus Ward's Struggle with a Ghost" I do 
 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 43 
 
 not know ; but I think that it was Mr. De Walden's^ choice. 
 The title was seasonable and the lecture successful. Then 
 came the tour to California, whither I proceeded in advance 
 to warn the miners on the Yuba, the travellers on the 
 Rio Sacramento, and the citizens of the Chrysopolis of the 
 Pacific that "A. Ward" would be there shortly. In 
 California the lecture was advertised under its old name of 
 " The Babes in the Wood." Piatt's Hall was selected for 
 the scene of operation, and, so popular was the lecturer, that 
 on the first night we took at the doors more than sixteen 
 hundred dollars in gold. The crowd proved too great tu 
 take ruoriey in the ordinary manner, and hats were used for 
 people to throw their dollars in. One hat broke through at 
 the crown. I doubt if we ever knew to a dollar how many- 
 dollars it once contained. 
 
 California was duly travelled over, and " The Babes 
 in the Wood" listened to with laughter in its flourishing- 
 cities, its mining-camps among the mountains, and its "new 
 placers" beside gold-bedded rivers. While journeying 
 
44 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 through that strangely-beautiful land, the serious question 
 arose — "What was to be done next? After California — 
 where ? 
 
 Before leaving New York, it had been a favourite scheme 
 of Artemus Ward not to return from California to the East 
 by way of Panama, but to come home across the Plains, and 
 to visit Salt Lake City by the way. The difficulty that now 
 presented itself was, that winter was close upon us, and that 
 it was no pleasant thing to cross the Sierra Nevada and 
 scale the Rocky Mountains with the thermometer far below 
 freezing point. Nor was poor Artemus even at that time a 
 strong man. My advice was to return to Panama, visit the 
 West India Islands, and come back to California in the 
 spring, lecture again in San Francisco, and then go on to 
 the land of the Mormons. Artemus doubted the feasibility 
 of this plan, and the decision was ultimately arrived at to 
 try the journey to Salt Lake. Unfortunately the winter 
 turned out to be one of the severest. When we arrived at 
 Salt Lake City, my poor friend was seized with typhoid 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 45 
 
 fever, resulting from the fatigue we had undergone, the 
 intense cold to which we had been subjected, and the excite- 
 ment of being on a journey of 3,500 miles across the North 
 American Continent, when the Pacific Railway had made 
 little progress and the Indians were reported not to be very 
 friendly. 
 
 The story of the trip is told in Artemus "Ward's lecture. 
 I have added to it, at the special request of the publisher, a 
 few explanatory notes, the purport of which is to render the 
 reader acquainted with the characteristics of the lecturer's 
 delivery. For the benefit of those who never had an oppor- 
 tunity of seeing Artemus "Ward nor of hearing him lecture, 
 I may be pardoned for attempting to describe the man, 
 himself. 
 
 In stature he was tall, in figure, slender. At any time 
 during our acquaintance his height must have been dis- 
 proportionate to his weight. Like his brother Cyrus, who 
 died a few years before him, Charles F. Browne, our 
 
46 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 " Artemus Ward," had the premonitory signs of a short 
 life strongly evident in his early manhood. There were 
 the lank form, the long pale fingers, the very white pearly 
 teeth, the thin, fine, soft hair, the undue brightness of the 
 eyes, the excitable and even irritable disposition, the 
 capricious appetite, and the alternately jubilant and de- 
 spondent tone of mind which too frequently indicate that 
 " the abhorred fury with the shears " is waiting too near at 
 hand to " slit the thin-spun life/* His hair was very light- 
 coloured, and not naturally curly. He used to joke in his 
 lecture about what it cost him to keep it curled ; he wore a 
 very large moustache without any beard or whiskers ; his 
 nose was exceedingly prominent, having an outline not un- 
 like that of the late Sir Charles Napier. His forehead was 
 large, with, to use the language of the phrenologists, the 
 organs of the perceptive faculties far more developed than 
 those of the imaginative powers. He had the manner and 
 bearing of a naturally-born gentleman. Great was the 
 disappointment of many who, having read his humorous 
 papers descriptive of his exhibition of snakes and wax- 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HIXGSTON. 47 
 
 work, and who having also formed their ideas of him 
 from the absurd pictures which had been attached to some 
 editions of his works, found on meeting with him that there 
 was no trace of the showman in his deportment, and little 
 to call up to their mind the smart Yankee who had married 
 " Betsy Jane." There was nothing to indicate that he had 
 rot lived a long time in Europe and acquired the polish 
 which men gain by coming in contact with the society of 
 European capitals. In his conversation there was no 
 marked peculiarity of accent to identify him as an American, 
 nor any of the braggadocio which some of his countrymen 
 unadvisedly assume. His voice was soft, gentle, and clear. 
 He could make himself audible in the largest lecture-rooms 
 without effort. His style of lecturing was peculiar ; so 
 thoroughly siii generis, that I know of no one with whom to 
 compare him, nor can any description very well convey an idea 
 of that which it was like. However much he caused his 
 audience to laugh, no smile appeared upon his own face. It 
 was grave even to solemnity, while he was giving utterance 
 to the most delicious absurdities. His assumption of in- 
 
48 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 difference to that which he was saying, his happy manner of 
 letting his best jokes fall from his lips as if unconscious of 
 their being jokes at all, his thorough self-possession on the 
 platform, and keen appreciation of that which suited his 
 audience, and that which did not, rendered him well qualified 
 for the task which he had undertaken — that of amusing the 
 public with a humorous lecture. He understood and 
 comprehended to a hair's breadth the grand secret of how 
 not to bore. He had weighed, measured, and calculated to 
 a nicety the number of laughs an audience could indulge in 
 on one evening, without feeling that they were laughing 
 just a little too much. Above all, he was no common man, 
 and did not cause his audience to feel that they were laughing 
 at that which they should feel ashamed of being amused 
 with. He was intellectually up to the level of nine-tenths 
 of those who listened to him, and in listening, they felt that 
 it was no fool who wore the cap and bells so excellently. 
 It was amusing to notice how with different people his 
 jokes produced a different effect. The Honourable Robert 
 Lowe attended one evening at the Mormon Lecture, and 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTOJV. 49 
 
 laughed as hilariously as any one in the room. The next 
 evening Mr. John Bright happened to be present. With 
 the exception of one or two occasional smiles, he listened 
 with grave attention. 
 
 In placing the lecture before the public in print it is 
 impossible by having recourse to any system of punctuation 
 to indicate the pauses, jerky emphases, and odd inflexions of 
 voice which characterized the delivery. The reporter of the 
 Standard newspaper describing his first lecture in London 
 aptly said, "Artemus dropped his jokes faster than the 
 meteors of last night succeeded each other in the sky. 
 And there was this resemblance between the flashes of his 
 humour and the flights of the meteors, that in each case 
 one looked for jokes or meteors, but they always came just 
 in the place that one least expected to find them. Half the 
 enjoyment of the evening lay, to some of those present, in, 
 listening to the hearty cachinnation of the people who only 
 found out the jokes some two or three minutes after they 
 were made, and who then laughed apparently at some grave 
 
50 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 statements of fact. Reduced to paper the snowman's jokes 
 are certainly not brilliant ; almost their whole effect lies in 
 their seemingly impromptu character They are carefully 
 led up to, of course, but they are uttered as if they are 
 mere afterthoughts of which the speaker is hardly sure." 
 Herein the writer in the Standard hits the most marked 
 peculiarity of Artemus Ward's style of lecturing. His 
 affectation of not knowing what he was uttering ; his seem- 
 ing fits of abstraction, and his grave melancholy aspect 
 constituted the very cream of the entertainment. Occasionally 
 he would amuse himself in an apparently meditative mood, 
 by twirling his little riding-whip, or by gazing earnestly 
 but with affected admiration at his panorama. At the 
 Egyptian Hall his health entirely failed him, and he 
 would occasionally have to use a seat during the course of 
 the lecture. In the notes which follow I have tried, I know 
 how inefficiently, to convey here and there an idea of how 
 Artemus rendered his lecture amusing by gesture or action. 
 I have also, at the request of the Publisher, made a few ex- 
 planatory comments on the subject of our Mormon trip. In 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 51 
 
 so doing I hope that I have not thrust myself too promi- 
 nently forward nor been too officious in my explanations. 
 My aim has been to add to the interest of the lecture with 
 those who never heard it delivered, and to revive in the 
 memory of those who did some of its notable peculiarities. 
 The illustrations are from photographs of the panorama 
 painted in America for Artemus, as the pictorial portion cf 
 his entertainment. 
 
 In the lecture is the fun of the journey. For the hard 
 facts the reader in quest of information is referred to a book 
 published previously to the lecturer's appearance at the 
 Egyptian Hall, the title of which is, " Artemus "Ward : 
 His Travels Among the Mormons." Much against the 
 grain as it was for Artemus to be statistical, he has 
 therein detailed some of the experiences of his Mormon 
 trip, with due regard to the exactitude and accuracy of 
 statement expected by information- seeking readers in a 
 book of travels. He was not precisely the sort of traveller 
 to write a paper for the evening meetings of the Royal 
 
52 ARTEMCS WARD'S LEC1URE. 
 
 Geographical Society, nor was he sufficiently interested in 
 philosophical theories to speculate on the developments of 
 Mormonism as illustrative of the history of religious belief. 
 We were looking out of the window of the Salt Lake 
 House one morning, when Brigham Young happened to 
 pass down the opposite side of Main Street. It was cold 
 weather, and the prophet was clothed in a thick cloak of 
 some green-coloured material. I remarked to Artemus that 
 Brigham had, seemingly, compounded Mormonism from 
 portions of a dozen different creeds, and that in selecting 
 green for the colour of his apparel he was imitating 
 Mahomet. " Has it not struck you/' I observed, " that 
 Swedenborgianism and Mahometanism are oddly blended in 
 the Mormon faith ? " 
 
 " Petticoatism and plunder/' was Artemus's reply ; and 
 that comprehended his whole philosophy of Mormonism. 
 As he remarked elsewhere : " Brigham Young is a man of 
 great natural ability. If you ask me, How pious is he ? I 
 treat it as a conundrum, and give it up." 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 53 
 
 To lecture in London, and at the Egyptian Hall, had long 
 been a favourite idea of Artemus Ward. Some humorist 
 
 has said that " All good Americans when they die go 
 
 to Paris." So do most, whether good or bad, while they 
 are living. 
 
 Still more strongly developed is the trans-atlantic 
 desire to go to Rome. In the far west of the Mis- 
 souri, in the remoter west of Colorado, and away in far 
 north-western Oregon, I have heard many a tradesman 
 express his intention to make dollars enough to enable 
 him to visit Rome. In a land where all is so new, where 
 they have had no past, where an old wall would be a 
 sensation, and a tombstone of anybody's great grandfather 
 the marvel of the whole region, the charms of the old 
 world have an irresistible fascination. To visit the home of 
 the Caesars they have read of in their school books, and to 
 look at architecture which they have seen pictorially, but 
 have nothing like it in existence around them, is very 
 naturally the strong wish of people who are nationally 
 
54 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 nomadic, and who have all more or less a smattering of 
 education. Artemus Ward never expressed to me any very 
 great wish to travel on the European continent, but to see 
 London was to accomplish something which he had dreamed of 
 from his boyhood. There runs from Marysville in California 
 to Oroville in the same State a short and singular little 
 railway, which, when we were there, was in a most 
 unfinished condition. To Oroville we were going. "We 
 were too early for the train at the Marysville station, 
 and sat down on a pile of timber to chat over future 
 prospects. 
 
 ""What sort of a man was Albert Smith ? " asked 
 Artemus, " And do you think that the Mormons would 
 be as good a subject for the Londoners as Mont Blanc 
 was?" 
 
 I answered his questions. He reflected for a few moments, 
 and then said, 
 
 " Well, old fellow, I'll tell you what I should like to do. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE BY E. P. HINGSTON. 55 
 
 I should like to go to London and give my lecture in the 
 same place. Can it be done ? " 
 
 It was done. Not in the same room, but under the same 
 roof and on the same floor ; in that gloomy-looking Hall 
 in Piccadilly, which was destined to be the ante-chamber to 
 the tomb of both lecturers. 
 
 Throughout this brief sketch I have written familiarly 
 of the late Mr. Charles F. Browne as " Artemus Ward," 
 or simply as " Artemus." I have done so advisedly, mainly 
 because, during the whole course of our acquaintance, I do 
 not remember addressing him as " Mr. Browne," or by his 
 real Christian name. To me he was always " Artemus " — 
 Artemus the kind, the gentle, the suave, the generous. One 
 who was ever a friend in the fullest meaning of the word, 
 and the best of companions in the amplest acceptance of the 
 phrase. His merry laugh and pleasant conversation are as 
 audible to me as if they were heard but yesterday ; his 
 words of kindness linger on the ear of memory, and his 
 
5 6 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 tones of genial mirth live in echoes which I shall listen to 
 for evermore. Two years will soon have passed away since 
 last he spoke, and — 
 
 " Silence now, enamoured of his voice 
 
 E. P. HINGSTON. 
 
 London, 
 
 October, 1868. 
 
THE LECTURE. 
 
A RTEMUS WARD'S first lecture in London was de- 
 livered at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, on Tuesday, 
 November 13, 1866. The room used was that which had 
 been recently occupied by Mr. Arthur Sketchley. It is 
 the lesser of the two rooms at the top of the staircase. 
 Not the one in which Mr. Albert Smith formerly made his 
 appearances. The attendance was very large, but the 
 audience for the most part consisted of invited friends and 
 the members of the press. The paying public having to 
 wait for another opportunity, though they struggled in 
 large numbers to obtain admission. 
 
 Copies of Artemus Ward's very original programmes are 
 given in the Appendix, together with the notice of the 
 lecture which appeared in the Times two days after its 
 delivery. The notice was written by Mr. John Oxenford. 
 

As at 
 
 THE PROSCENIUM 
 
 \\ I 1 II THE CURTAIN DOWN. 
 
 Artemus Ward's First Lecture in the Egyptian Hull, Loudon, 
 (in Tuesday, November 13, 1866. 
 
 JLJUi^^ 
 
 This was the appearand of the stage during the prologue of the 
 
 lecture, he/ore any portion of Hie panorama was exhibited. The lights 
 in the room being then turned up, the wondrous gravity of t lie lecturer's 
 face was fully risible at the time that he teas uttering his best jokes. 
 The picture was surrounded with a large gilt frame. 
 
THE LECTURE. 
 
 By Artemus Ward. 
 
 VOU are entirely welcome ladies and gentlemen 
 to my little picture-shop. 1 
 
 I couldn't give you a very clear idea of the 
 Mormons — and Utah — and the Plains — and the 
 Rocky Mountains — without opening a picture- 
 shop and therefore I open one. 
 
 1 "My little pic hire- shop." — I have already stated that the 
 room used was the lesser of the two on the first-floor of the 
 Egyptian Hall. The panorama was to the left on entering, 
 and Artemus Ward stood at the south-east corner facing the 
 door. He had beside him a music-stand, on which for the 
 first few days he availed himself of the assistance afforded by 
 a sheet of foolscap on which all his " cues " were written out 
 in a large hand. The proscenium was covered with dark 
 
60 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 I don't expect to do great things here — but I 
 have thought that if I could make money enough 
 to buy me a passage to New Zealand 2 I should feel 
 
 that I had not lived in vain. 
 
 I don't want to live in vain. I'd 
 
 rather live in Margate — or here. But 
 
 cloth, and the picture bounded by a great gilt frame. On the 
 rostrum behind the lecturer was a little door giving admission 
 to the space behind the picture where the piano was placed. 
 Through this door Artemus would disappear occasionally in 
 the course of the evening, either to instruct his pianist to play 
 a few more bars of music, to tell his assistants to roll the 
 picture more quickly or more slowly, or to give some instruc- 
 tions to the man who worked " the moon." The little 
 lecture-room was thronged nightly during the very few 
 weeks of its being open. 
 
 2 " To New Zealand." — Artemus Ward seriously contem- 
 plated a visit to Australia, after having made the tour of 
 England. He was very much interested in all Australian 
 affairs, had a strong desire to see the lands of the South, and 
 looked forward to the long sea-voyage as one of the means by 
 which he should regain his lost health. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 61 
 
 I wish when the Egyptians built this hall they 
 had given it a little more ventilation. 3 
 
 If you should be dissatisfied with anything here 
 to-night — I will admit you all free in New Zea- 
 land if yOU will come to me there for the orders. Any 
 
 respectable cannibal will tell you where 
 I live. This shows that I have a forgiving 
 spirit. 
 
 I really don't care for money. I only travel 
 round to see the world and to exhibit my clothes. 
 These clothes I have on were a great 
 success in America. 4 
 
 s " More ventilation ." — The heat and closeness of the 
 densely-packed room was a cause of common complaint 
 among the audience. 
 
 4 " These clothes, etc." — This was one of poor Artemus's jokes 
 which owed more of its success to its oddity than to its 
 veracity. While lecturing at the Egyptian Hall he wore a 
 fashionably-cut dress coat in the evening. It was what he 
 
bz ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 How often do large fortunes ruin young- men ! 
 I should like to be ruined, but I can get 
 on very well as I am. 
 
 I am not an Artist. I don't paint myself 
 
 though perhaps if I were a middle-aged single lady 
 
 i should yet I have a passion for pictures. 1 
 
 have had a great many pictures — photographs — 
 taken of myself. Some of them are very pretty 
 — rather sweet to look at for a short 
 time — and as I said before I like them. I've 
 always loved pictures. 
 
 had never done during his lecture-career in the States, and 
 he used privately to complain how uncomfortable he felt in it. 
 He assumed the most deplorable look when pointing out his 
 costume to his audience. His voice dropped into a moody 
 reflective tone, and then suddenly passed into a much higher 
 key when he commenced to allude to " large fortunes." He 
 seemed to have shaken off the embarrassment of his fashionable 
 clothes, and to be glad to pass on to another subject. In the 
 punctuation of the succeeding paragraph of the lecture, I have 
 endeavoured to convey an idea of the long pause he made 
 between some of his sentences. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 63 
 
 I could draw on wood at a very tender age. 
 When a mere child I once drew a small cart- 
 load of raw turnips over a wooden bridge. 
 
 The people of the village noticed me. I 
 
 drew their attention. They said I had a 
 future before me. Up to that time I had an idea 
 it was behind me. 
 
 Time passed on. It always does by the way. 
 You may possibly have noticed that Time 
 
 passes On. It is a kind of way Time has. 
 
 I became a man. I haven't distinguished 
 myself at all as an artist — but I have always been 
 more or less mixed up with Art. I have an uncle 
 who takes photographs — and I have a servant 
 
 Who takes anything he can get his hands on. 
 
 When I was in Rome Rome in New York 
 
 State I mean a distinguished sculpist wanted 
 
 to sculp me. But I said "No." I saw through 
 
64 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 the designing man. My model once in his hands 
 —he would have flooded the market with my 
 
 busts and I couldn't stand it to see everybody 
 
 going round with a bust of me. Everybody 
 would want one of course — and wherever I should 
 go I should meet the educated classes with my 
 bust, taking it home to their families. This 
 would be more than my modesty could 
 stand and I should have to return to 
 
 America where my creditors are. 
 
 I like Art. I admire dramatic Art — although 
 I failed as an actor. 
 
 It was in my schoolboy days that I failed as 
 an actor. 5 The play was the " Ruins of Pom- 
 
 5 "Failed as an actor.'" — Artemus made many attempts as an 
 amateur actor, but never to his own satisfaction. He was very 
 fond of the society of actors and actresses. Their weaknesses 
 amused him as much as their talents excited his admiration. 
 One of his favourite sayings was that the world was made up 
 of " men, women, and.-the people on the stage." 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 65 
 
 peii." 1 played the Ruins. It was not a 
 
 very successful performance — but it was better 
 than the "Burning Mountain." He was not 
 
 P"OOd. He was a bad Vesuvius. 
 
 The remembrance often makes me ask — 
 
 "Where are the boys of my youth?" 1 assure 
 
 you this is not a conundrum. Some are 
 
 amongst you here some in America 
 
 some are in gaol. — 
 
 Hence arises a most touching question — 
 " Where are the girls of my youth ? " Some are 
 married some would like to be. 
 
 Oh my Maria ! Alas ! she married another. 
 They frequently do. I hope she is happy — because 
 
 I am. 6 Some people are not happy. I have 
 
 noticed that. 
 
 8 " Because I am I " — Spoken with a sigh. It was a joke 
 which always told. Artemus never failed to use it in his 
 "Babes in the Wood" lecture, and the "Sixty Minutes in 
 Africa," as well as in the Mormon story. 
 
66 ARTEMUS WARD 'S LECTURE. 
 
 A gentleman friend of mine came to me one 
 day with tears in his eyes. I said " Why these 
 weeps?" He said he had a mortgage on his 
 farm — and wanted to borrow £200. I lent him 
 the money — and he went away. Some time after 
 he returned with more tears. He said he must 
 leave me for ever. I ventured to remind him of 
 the £2 00 he borrowed. He was much cut up. I 
 thought I would not be hard upon him — so told 
 him I would throw off one hundred pounds. He 
 brightened — shook my hand — and said — "Old 
 friend — I won't allow you to outdo me in libe- 
 rality I'll throw off the other hundred." 
 
 As a manager I was always rather more suc- 
 cessful than as an actor. 
 
 Some years ago I engaged a celebrated Living 
 American Skeleton for a tour through Australia. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 67 
 
 He was the thinnest man I ever saw. He was a 
 splendid skeleton. He didn't weigh anything 
 
 scarcely and I said to myself — the people of 
 
 Australia will flock to see this tremendous curi- 
 osity. It is a long voyage — as you know — from 
 New York to Melbourne — and to my utter sur- 
 prise the skeleton had no sooner got out to sea 
 than he commenced eating in the most horrible 
 manner. He had never been on the ocean before 
 
 — and he said it agreed with him. 1 thought 
 
 so ! 1 never saw a man eat so much in my 
 
 life. Beef — mutton — pork he swallowed them 
 
 all like a shark and between meals he was 
 
 often discovered behind barrels eating hard-boiled 
 eggs. The result was that when we reached 
 Melbourne this infamous skeleton weighed 64 
 pounds more than I did ! 
 
 I thought I was ruined but I wasn't. I 
 
 took him on to California another very long 
 
68 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 sea voyage and when I got him to San Fran- 
 cisco I exhibited him as a Fat Man. 7 
 
 This story hasn't anything to do with my 
 
 Entertainment, I know but one of the 
 
 principal features of my Entertainment is that 
 
 it Contains SO many things that don't have anything to 
 do with it. 
 
 My Orchestra is small but I am sure it is 
 
 very good — so far as it goes. I give my 
 pianist ten pounds a night — and his 
 washing. 8 
 
 7 " As a Fat Man" — The reader need scarcely be informed 
 that this narrative is about as real as "A. Ward's Snaiks," and 
 about as much matter-of-fact as his journey through the States 
 with a wax-work show. 
 
 8 "Afy Pianist, Gfc." That a good pianist could be hired 
 for a small sum in England was a matter of amusement to 
 Artemus. More especially when he found a gentleman who 
 was obliging enough to play anything he desired, such as 
 break-downs and airs which had the most absurd relation to 
 the scene they were used to illustrate. In the United States 
 his pianist was desirous of playing music of a superior order, 
 much against the consent of the lecturer. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 69 
 
 I like Music. 1 can't sing. As a singist I 
 
 am not a success. I am saddest when I 
 sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder 
 even than I am. 
 
 The other night some silver-voiced young 
 men came under my window and sang — " Come 
 
 where my love lies dreaming." 1 didn't go. 
 
 I didn't think it would be correct. 
 
 I found music very soothing when I lay ill 
 
 with fever in Utah and I was very ill 1 was 
 
 fearfully wasted. My face was hewn down to 
 
 nothing — and my nose was so sharp I didn't dare 
 stick it into other people's business — for fear it 
 would stay there — and I should never get it 
 again. And on those dismal days a Mormon lady 
 
 she was married — tho' not so much so as 
 
 her husband — he had fifteen other wives she used 
 
 to sing a ballad commencing " Sweet bird — do 
 not fly away!" and I told her I wouldn't. 
 
7° 
 
 ARTEMUS WARDS LECTURE. 
 
 She played the accordion divinely — accordionly I 
 praised her. 
 
 I met a man in Oregon who hadn't any teeth 
 
 — not a tooth in his head yet that man 
 
 could play on the bass drum better than 
 
 any man I ever met. He kept a hotel. 
 
 They have queer hotels in Oregon. I remember 
 one where they gave me a bag of oats for a 
 
 pillow 1 had night mares of course. In 
 
 the morning the landlord said — How do you feel 
 — old hoss — hay ? 1 told him I felt my oats. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 71 
 
 9 pERMIT me now to quietly state that altho' I 
 am here with my cap and bells I am also here 
 with some serious descriptions of the Mormons 
 
 — their manners — their customs -and while the 
 
 pictures I shall present to your notice are by no 
 means works of art — they are painted from pho- 
 
 9 "Permit me now." Though the serious part of the lecture 
 was here entered upon, it was not delivered in a graver tone 
 than that in which he had spoken the farcicalities of the 
 prologue. Most of the prefatory matter was given with an 
 air of earnest thought ; the arms sometimes folded, and the chin 
 resting on one hand. On the occasion of his first exhibiting 
 the panorama at New York he used a fishing-rod to point out 
 the picture with ; subsequently he availed himself of an old 
 umbrella. In the Egyptian Hall he used his little riding- 
 whip. 
 
72 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 tographs actually taken on the spot 10 and I 
 
 am sure I need not inform any person present 
 who was ever in the territory of Utah that they 
 are as faithful as they could possibly be. 11 
 
 I went to Great Salt Lake City by way of 
 California. 12 
 
 10 "Photographs." They were photographed by Savage and 
 Ottinger, of Salt Lake City, the photographers to Brigham 
 Young. 
 
 11 Curiam. The picture was concealed from view during the 
 first part of the lecture by a crimson curtain. This was drawn 
 together or opened many times in the course of the lecture, 
 and at odd points of the picture. I am not aware that 
 Artemus himself could have explained why he caused the cur- 
 tain to be drawn at one place and not at another. Probably 
 he thought it to be one of his good jokes that it should shut 
 in the picture just when there was no reason for its being used. 
 
 12 " By way of California." That is, he went by steamer 
 from New York to Aspinwall, thence across the Isthmus of 
 Panama by railway, and then from Panama to California by 
 another steamboat. A journey which then occupied about 
 three weeks. 
 
THE STEAMER "ARIEL." 
 
 ^^WWWWWWWWWWffW 
 
 One of the United States Mail line of Steamers from New York to 
 Aspinwall. Being a supplemental boat only, its arrangements were 
 none of the best. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 75 
 
 I went to California on the steamer "Ariel." 
 —This is the steamer "Ariel." 
 
 Oblige me by calmly gazing on the steamer 
 
 "Ariel" and when you go to California 
 
 be sure and go on some other steamer 
 
 because the "Ariel" isn't a rery good one. 
 
 When I reached the "Ariel" — at pier No. 4 
 — New York — I found the passengers in a state 
 of great confusion about their things — which 
 were being thrown around by the ship's porters 
 
 in a manner at once damaging and idiotic. So 
 
 great was the excitement — my fragile form was 
 smashed this way — and jammed that way — till 
 
76 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 finally I was shoved into a stateroom which was 
 Occupied by two middle-aged females — who said 
 
 "Base man — leave us — O, leave us!" I left them 
 
 Oh— I left them! 
 
 We reach Accapulco on the coast of Mexico 
 in due time. Nothing of special interest occurred 
 
 at Accapulco only some of the Mexican ladies 
 
 are very beautiful. They all have brilliant black 
 
 hair hair "black as starless night" if I 
 
 may quote from the "Family Herald." It 
 
 don't curl. A Mexican lady's hair never curls 
 
 it is straight as an Indian's. Some 
 
 people's hair won't curl under any circumstances. 
 
 My hair won't curl under two shillings. 13 
 
 1S " Under Two Shillings." Artemus always wore his hair 
 straight until after his severe illness in Salt Lake City. So 
 much of it dropped off during his recovery that he became 
 dissatisfied with the long meagre appearance his countenance 
 presented when he surveyed it in the looking-glass. After his 
 lecture at the Salt Lake City Theatre he did not lecture again 
 
MONTGOMERY STREET, SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 j^^ww3^w ^w^i^#ww%#«f 
 
 The main street of the chief city of California. It is built over 
 what was a few years ago a portion of the Bay of San Francisco. In 
 digging up a part of the street, some time since, the excavators came 
 upon the hull of an old vessel full of cliests of tea. The Chinaman in 
 the foreground was pointed out hy the lecturer preparatory to liis re- 
 marks on the Chinese theatre. 
 78 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 79 
 
 The great thoroughfare of the imperial city 
 of the Pacific Coast. 
 
 The Chinese form a large element in the popu- 
 lation of San Francisco — and I went to the 
 Chinese Theatre. 
 
 until we had crossed the Rocky Mountains and arrived at 
 Denver City, the capital of Colorado. On the afternoon he 
 was to lecture there I met him coming out of an ironmonger's 
 store with a small parcel in his hand. " I want you, old 
 fellow," he said, " I have been all round the City for them, 
 and I've got them at last." " Got what ? " I asked. " A pair 
 of curling-tongs. I am going to have my hair curled to lecture 
 in to-night. I mean to cross the plains in curls. Come home 
 with me and try to curl it for me. I don't want to go to any 
 idiot of a barber to be laughed at." I played the part of 
 friseur. Subsequently he became his own " curlist," as he 
 phrased it. From that day forth Artemus was a curly-haired 
 man. 
 
 F 
 
80 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 A Chinese play often lasts two months. 
 Commencing at the hero's birth, it is cheerfully 
 conducted from week to week till he is either 
 killed or married. 
 
 The night I was there a Chinese comic vocalist 
 sang a Chinese comic song. It took him six 
 weeks to finish it — but as my time was limited I 
 went away at the expiration of 215 verses. 
 There were 11,000 verses to this song — the 
 
 chorus being "Tural lural dural, ri fol day" 
 
 which was repeated twice at the end of each verse 
 making — as you will at once see — the appal- 
 ling number of 22,000 "tural lural dural, ri fol 
 days" and the man still lives. 
 
VIRGINIA CITY, NEVADA. 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^pP^^^^^^^^pj 
 
 When Artemus Ward paid his visit heir, there was a population of 
 about 15,000, with three daily newspapers. Five years previously it 
 had no existence. It was the largest place between the Sierra Nevada 
 Mountains and Salt Lake City. (i$>b$.) 
 
 82 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 83 
 
 Virginia City — in the bright new State of 
 Nevada. 14 
 
 A wonderful little city — right in the heart 
 
 of the famous Washoe silver regions the 
 
 mines of which annually produce over twenty-five 
 millions of solid silver. This silver is melted 
 into solid bricks — of about the size of ordinary 
 
 14 "Virginia City" The view of Virginia City given in 
 the panorama conveyed a very poor idea of the marvellous 
 capital of the silver region of Nevada. Artemus caused the 
 curtain to close up between his view of San Francisco and that 
 of Virginia City, as a simple means of conveying an idea of the 
 distance travelled between. To arrive at the city of silver we 
 had to travel from San Francisco to Sacramento by steamboat, 
 thence from Sacramento to Folsom by railroad, then by coach 
 to Placerville. At Placerville we commenced the ascent of the 
 Sierra Nevada, gaining the summit of Johnson's Pass about 
 
84 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 house-bricks — and carted off to San Francisco 
 with mules. The roads often swarm with these 
 silver wagons. 
 
 One hundred and seventy-five miles to the 
 east of this place are the Reese River Silver 
 Mines — which are supposed to be the richest in 
 the world. 
 
 four o'clock in the morning; thence we descended; skirted the 
 shores of Lake Tahoe, and arrived at Carson City, where 
 Artemus lectured. From Carson, the next trip was across an 
 arid plain, to the great silver region. Empire City, the first 
 place we struck, was composed of about fifty wooden houses 
 and three or four quartz mills. Leaving it behind us, we 
 passed through the Devil's Gate — a grand ravine, with pre- 
 cipitous mountains on each side ; then we came to Silver 
 City, Gold Hill, and Virginia. The road was all up-hill. 
 Virginia City itself is built on a ledge cut out of the side of 
 Mount Davidson, which rises some 9,000 feet above the sea 
 level — the city being about half way up its side. To Artemus 
 Ward the wild character of the scenery, the strange manners 
 of the red-shirted citizens, and the odd developments of life 
 met with in that uncouth mountain-town were all replete with 
 
PLAINS BETWEEN VIRGINIA & SALT LAKE. 
 
 £[Pj a &, a^^KA Aa ~a ^^QQQkAA/QQQQi /$ 
 
 Herbage on the plains of Nevada consists almost exclusively of the 
 Sage-brush ( Artemisia tridentataj, the most dreary-looking of shrubs. 
 The leaves are of a leaden colour, and the stems are gnarled and wiry. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 87 
 
 The great American Desert in winter-time 
 
 the desert which is so frightfully gloomy always. 
 
 No trees no houses no people — save the 
 
 miserable beings who live in wretched huts and 
 have charge of the horses and mules of the 
 Overland Mail Company. 
 
 interest. We stayed there about a week. During the time of 
 our stay he explored every part of the place, met many old 
 friends from the Eastern States, and formed many new ac- 
 quaintances, with some of whom acquaintance ripened into 
 warm friendship. Among the latter was Mr. Samuel L. 
 Clemens, now well known as " Mark Twain." He was then 
 sub-editing one of the three papers published daily in 
 Virginia — The Territorial Enterprise. Artemus detected in the 
 writings of Mark Twain the indications of great humorous 
 power, and strongly advised the writer to seek a better field 
 
88 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 This picture is a great work of art. It is 
 
 an oil painting — done in petroleum. It 
 is by the Old Masters. It was the last thing they 
 did before dying. They did this and 
 then they expired. 
 
 for his talents. Since then he has become a well-known New 
 York lecturer and author. With Mark Twain, Artemus made 
 a descent into the Gould and Curry Silver Mine at Virginia, 
 the largest mine of the kind, I believe, in the world. The 
 account of the descent formed a long and very amusing 
 article in the next morning's Enterptise. To wander about 
 the town and note its strange developments occupied Artemus 
 incessantly. I was sitting writing letters at the hotel when 
 he came in hurriedly, and requested me to go out with him. 
 " Come and see some joking much better than mine," said 
 he. He led me to where one of Wells, Fargo, & Co.'s 
 express waggons was being rapidly filled with silver bricks. 
 Ingots of the precious metal, each almost as large as an ordi- 
 nary brick, were being thrown from one man to another to 
 load the waggon, just as bricks or cheeses are transferred from 
 hand to had by carters in England. " Good old jokes those, 
 Hingston. Good, solid ' Babes in the Wood,' " observed 
 Artemus. Yet that evening he lectured in "Maguire's Opera 
 House," Virginia City, to an audience composed chiefly of 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 8g 
 
 The most celebrated artists of London are so 
 
 'delighted with this picture that they come to the 
 
 Hall every day to gaze at it. I wish you were 
 
 nearer to it — so you could see it better. I wish 
 
 I could take it to your residences and let you see 
 
 miners, and the receipts were not far short of eight hundred 
 dollars. A droll building it was to be called an " Opera 
 House," and to bear that designation in a place so outlandish. 
 Perched up on the side of a mountain — from the windows of 
 the dressing rooms — a view could be had of fifty miles of the 
 American desert. It was an " Opera House ;" yet in the 
 plain beneath it there were Indians who still led the life of 
 savages, and carried dried human scalps attached to their 
 girdles. It was an " Opera House ;" yet, for many hundred 
 miles around it, Nature wore the roughest, sternest, and most 
 barren of aspects — no tree, no grass, no shrub, but the 
 colourless and dreary sage-brush. Every piece of timber, 
 every, brick, and every stone in that " Opera House " had 
 been brought from California, over those snow-capped 
 Sierras, which, but a few years before had been regarded as 
 beyond the last outposts of civilisation. Every singer who 
 had sung, and every actor who had performed at that "Opera 
 House" had been whirled down the sides of the Nevada moun- 
 tains, clinging to the coach-top, and mentally vowing never 
 
go ARTEMUS WARE'S LECTURE. 
 
 it by daylight. Some of the greatest artists in 
 London come here every morning before daylight 
 with lanterns to look at. They say they never 
 saw anything like it before and they hope 
 
 they never shall again. 
 
 again to trust the safety of his neck on any such professional 
 excursion. The drama has been very plucky "out West." 
 Thalia, Melpomene, and Euterpe become young ladies of 
 great animal spirits, and fearless daring, when they feel 
 the fresh breezes of the Pacific blowing in their faces. At 
 Virginia City we purchased black felt shirts half an inch thick, 
 and grey blankets of ample size to keep us warm for the 
 journey we were about to undertake. We invested also in 
 revolvers to defend ourselves against the Indians ; a dozen 
 cold roast fowls to eat on the way ; a demijohn of Bourbon 
 whisky, and a bagful of unground coffee. This last was 
 about as useful as any of our purchases. Thus provided, we 
 started across the desert on our way to Reese River, and 
 thence to Salt Lake City. Our coach was a fearfully lumber- 
 ing old vehicle of great strength, constructed for jolting over 
 rocky ledges, plunging into marshy swamps, and for rolling 
 through miles of sand. The horses were small and wiry, 
 accustomed to the country, and able to exist on anything 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 91 
 
 When I first showed this picture in New- 
 York, the audience were so enthusiastic in their 
 admiration of this picture that they called 
 
 for the Artist and when he appeared they threw 
 
 brickbats at him. 
 
 which it is possible for a horse to eat. There were four of us 
 in the coach. The "Pioneer Company's" man who drove 
 us was full of whisky and good-humour when he mounted 
 the box, and singing in chorus, " Jordan 's a hard road to 
 travel on," we bowled down the slope of Mount Davidson 
 towards the deserts of Nevada, en route for New Pass Station. 
 
 u * " Threw brickbats at him" This portion of the panorama 
 was very badly painted. When the idea of having a panorama 
 was first entertained by Artemus he wished to have one 
 of great artistic merit. Finding considerable difficulty in 
 procuring one, and also discovering that the expense of a 
 real work of art would be beyond his means, he resolved on 
 having a very bad one, or one so bad in parts that its very 
 badness would give him scope for jest. In the small towns 
 of the Western States it passed very well for a first-class pic- 
 ture, but what it was really worth in an artistic point of view 
 its owner was very well aware. 
 
92 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 A bird's-eye-view of Great Salt Lake City 
 the strange city in the Desert about which 
 
 so much has been heard the city of the people 
 
 who call themselves Saints. 15 
 
 I know there is much interest taken in these 
 remarkable people — ladies and gentlemen and 
 
 16 " Salt Lake City" Our stay in the Mormon capital ex- 
 tended over six weeks. So cheerless was the place in mid- 
 winter, that we should not have stayed half that time had not 
 Artemus Ward succumbed to an attack of typhoid fever 
 almost as soon as we arrived. The incessant travel by night 
 and day, the depressing effect produced by intense cold, 
 travelling through leagues of snow and fording half-frozen 
 rivers at midnight, the excitement of passing through Indian 
 country, and some slight nervous apprehension of how he 
 
PART OF SALT LAKE CITY, 
 
 VIEWED FROM A DISTANCE. 
 
 The City is laid out in squares; each house standing on an acre 
 and a quarter of ground, with a canal of clear water flowing in front. 
 (This picture joins on the one which follows it. I 
 
 93 
 
SALT LAKE CITY. 
 
 FROM THE HEIGHTS BEHIND 11. 
 
 jgf^Jywjw 
 
 The building in the foreground is the Mormon arsenal. To the 
 right, in the mid-distance, is the River Jordan, flowing from Lake 
 Utah to the Salt Lake. The valley through which the Jordan flows is 
 one of the most fertile on the North American continent. 
 
 95 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 97 
 
 I have thought it better to make the purely de- 
 scriptive part of my Entertainment entirely 
 
 serious. 1 will not — then — for the next ten 
 
 minutes — confine myself to my subject. 
 
 Some seventeen years ago a small band of 
 Mormons — headed by Brigham Young — com- 
 menced in the present thrifty metropolis of Utah. 
 The population of the territory of Utah is over 
 100,000 — chiefly Mormons and they are in- 
 creasing at the rate of from five to ten thousand 
 
 would be received among the Mormons, considering that he 
 had ridiculed them in a paper published some time before, all 
 conspired to produce the illness which resulted. Fever of 
 the typhoid form is not uncommon in Utah. Probably the 
 rarefaction of the air on a plateau 4,000 feet above the sea 
 level has something to do with its frequency. Artemus's fears 
 relative to the cordiality of his reception proved to be 
 groundless, for during the period of his being ill he was 
 carefully tended. Brigham Young commissioned Mr. Sten- 
 
98 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 annually. The converts to Mormonism now are 
 almost exclusively confined to English and 
 Germans. Wales and Cornwall have con- 
 tributed largely to the population of Utah during 
 the last few years. The population of Great Salt 
 Lake City is 20,000. The streets are eight 
 
 house, postmaster to the city and Elder of the Mormon 
 Church, to visit him frequently and supply him with whatever 
 he required. One of the two wives of Mr. Townsend, land- 
 lord of the Salt Lake House, the hotel where we stopped was 
 equally as kind. Whatever the feelings of the Mormons were 
 towards poor Artemus, they at least treated him with sympa- 
 thetic hospitality. Even Mr. Porter Rockwell, who is known 
 as one of the "Avenging Angels," or "Danite Band," and 
 who is reported to have made away with some seventeen or 
 eighteen enemies of the " Saints," came and sat by the bed- 
 side of the sufferer, detailing to him some of the little "diffi- 
 culties" he had experienced in effectually silencing the un- 
 believers of times past. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 99 
 
 rods wide* — and are neither flagged nor paved. 
 A stream of pure mountain spring water courses 
 through each street — and is conducted into the 
 Gardens of the Mormons. The houses are mostly 
 of adobe — or sun-dried brick — and present a neat 
 
 and comfortable appearance. They are usually 
 
 a story and a half high. Now and then you see 
 
 a fine modern house in Salt Lake City but 
 
 no house that is dirty, shabby, and dilapidated — 
 because there are no absolutely poor people in 
 
 Utah. Every Mormon has a nice garden and 
 
 every Mormon has a tidy dooryard. Neatness 
 
 is a great characteristic of the Mormons. 
 
 The Mormons profess to believe that they are 
 the chosen people of God they call them- 
 selves Latter-day Saints and they call us 
 
 people of the outer world Gentiles. They say 
 * Equal to 64 feet wide. 
 
ioo ARTE 'M US WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 that Mr. Brigham Young is a prophet — the legi- 
 timate successor of Joseph Smith — who founded 
 the Mormon religion. They also say they are 
 authorised — by special revelation from Heaven — 
 to marry as many wives as they can comfortably 
 support. 
 
 This wife- system they call plurality the 
 
 world calls it polygamy. That at its best it is an 
 accursed thing — I need not of course inform you 
 
 but you will bear in mind that I am here 
 
 as a rather cheerful reporter of what I saw in 
 
 Utah and I fancy it isn't at all necessary for 
 
 me to grow virtuously indignant over something 
 we all know is hideously wrong. 
 
 You will be surprised to hear — I was amazed 
 to see — that among the Mormon women there are 
 some few persons of education — of positive culti- 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 101 
 
 vation. As a class the Mormons are not an 
 
 educated people but they are by no means 
 
 the community of Ignoramuses so many writers 
 have told us they were. 
 
 The valley in which they live is splendidly 
 favoured. They raise immense crops. They have 
 mills of all kinds. They have coal — lead — and 
 silver mines. All they eat — all they drink — all 
 they wear they can produce themselves — and still 
 have a great abundance to sell to the gold regions 
 of Idaho on the one hand — and the silver regions 
 of Nevada on the other. 
 
 The President of this remarkable community 
 the head of the Mormon Church is 
 
 Brigham Young. He is called President 
 
 Young — and Brother Brigham. He is about 54 
 years old — altho' he doesn't look to be over 45. 
 
 He has sandy hair and whiskers is of medium 
 
 height and is a little inclined to corpulency. 
 
loz ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 He was born in the State of Vermont. His power 
 is more absolute than that of any living sovereign 
 yet he uses it with such consummate dis- 
 cretion that his people are almost madly devoted 
 to him — and that they would cheerfully die for 
 him if they thought the sacrifice were demanded 
 — I cannot doubt. 
 
 He is a man of enormous wealth. One- 
 tenth of everything sold in the territory of Utah 
 
 goes to the Church and Air. Brigham Young 
 
 is the Church. It is supposed that he speculates 
 
 with these funds at all events — he is one of 
 
 the wealthiest men now living worth several 
 
 millions — without doubt. He is a bold — bad 
 
 man but that he is also a man of extraordi- 
 nary administrative ability no one can doubt who 
 has watched his astounding career for the past 
 ten years. It is only fair for me to add that he 
 treated me with marked kindness during my 
 sojourn in Utah. 
 
THE SALT LAKE HOUSE. 
 
 ^y^ 
 
 The hotel in Salt Lake City at which Art emus Ward stopped during 
 liis six weeks' stay, and where he was seized with illness. In the 
 distance are the Wahsatch Mountains. 
 
 104 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 105 
 
 The West Side of Main Street — Salt Lake City 
 
 — including a view of the Salt Lake Hotel. It 
 
 is a temperance hotel. 16 I prefer temperance 
 hotels — altho' they sell worse liquor than 
 
 16 " Temperance Hotel." At the date of our visit, there was 
 only one place in Salt Lake City where strong drink was 
 allowed to be sold. Brigham Young himself owned the 
 property, and vended the liquor by wholesale, not permitting 
 any of it to be drunk on the premises. It was a coarse, 
 inferior kind of whisky, known in Salt Lake as "Valley Tan." 
 Throughout the city there was no drinking-bar nor billiard 
 room, so far as I am aware. But a drink on the sly could 
 always be had at one of the hard-goods stores, in the back 
 office behind the pile of metal saucepans ; or at one of the 
 
io6 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 any other kind of hotels. But the Salt Lake 
 
 Hotel sells none nor is there a bar in all 
 
 Salt Lake City but I found when I was thirsty 
 
 — and I generally am — that I could get some 
 very good brandy of one of the Elders — on the 
 sly — and I never on any account allow my business to 
 
 interfere with my drinking. 
 
 dry-goods stores, in the little parlour in the rear of the bales 
 of calico. At the present time I believe that there are two or 
 three open bars in Salt Lake, Brigham Young having recog- 
 nised the right of the "Saints" to "liquor up" occasionally. 
 But whatever other failings they may have, intemperance 
 cannot be laid to their charge. Among the Mormons there 
 are no paupers, no gamblers, and no drunkards. 
 
MAIN STREET, SALT LAKE CITY 
 
 This picture is a continuation of the preceding one. The room in 
 which Artemus resided was that in the white part of the house, under 
 the Verandah. The hotel zvas kept by Mr. James Townsend, a 
 Mormon. 
 
THE COACH TO SALT LAKE. 
 
 In the panorama, the Coach is made a much more sightly object 
 than it really was. Instead of looking like a respectable omnibus, it 
 was a huge jolting affair of cumbrous proportions, with sad arrange- 
 ments fur internal comfort. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 There is the Overland Mail Coach. 17 That 
 
 is, the den on wheels in which we have been 
 
 17 " Overland Mail Coach" From Virginia City to Salt 
 Lake we travelled in the coaches of the " Pioneer Stage 
 Company." In leaving Salt Lake for Denver we changed to 
 those of the " Overland Stage Company," of which the 
 renowned Ben Holliday is proprietor, a gentleman whose 
 name on the Plains is better known than that of any other 
 man in America. 
 
ii2 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 crammed for the past ten days — and ten nights. 
 Those of you who have been in Newgate 18 - — 
 
 and staid there any length of time as 
 
 visitors can realize how I felt. 
 
 18 " Been in Newgate." The manner in which Artemus 
 uttered this joke was peculiarly characteristic of his style of 
 lecturing. The commencement of the sentence was spoken 
 as if unpremeditated ; then, when he had got as far as the 
 word " Newgate," he paused, as if wishing to call back that 
 which he had said. The applause was unfailingly uproarious. 
 Travelling through the States^ he used to say, " Those of you 
 who have been in the Penitentiary." On the morning after 
 his lecture at Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, he was waited on by 
 a tall, gaunt, dark-haired man, of sour aspect and sombre 
 demeanour, who carried in his hand a hickory walking- cane, 
 which he grasped very menacingly, as addressing Artemus he 
 said, " I guess you are the gentleman who lect'red last 
 night ? " Mr. Ward replied in the affirmative. " Then I've 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 113 
 
 The American Overland Mail Route com- 
 mences at Sacramento — California and ends 
 
 at Atchison — Kansas. The distance is two 
 thousand two hundred miles but you go part 
 
 got to have satisfaction from you. I took my wife and her 
 sister to hear you lecter, and you insulted them." " Excuse 
 me," said Artemus. " I went home immediately the lecture 
 was over, and had no conversation with any lady in the hall 
 that evening." The visitor grew more angry, " Hold thar, 
 Mr. Lect'rer. You told my wife and her sister that they'd 
 been in the Penitentiary. I must have satisfaction for the 
 insult, and I'm come to get it." Artemus was hesitating how 
 to reply, when the hotel clerk suddenly appeared upon the 
 scene, saying, " I've a good memory for voices. You are Mr. 
 Josiah Mertin, I believe ?" " I am," was the reply. "And I 
 am the late clerk of the Girard House, Philadelphia. There's 
 a little board-bill of yours owing there for ninety-two dollars 
 and a half. You skedaddled without paying. Will you oblige 
 me by waiting till I send for an officer ? " I believe that Mr. 
 Josiah Mertin did not even wait for " satisfaction." 
 
ii4 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 of the way by rail. The Pacific Railway 19 is now 
 completed from Sacramento — California — to 
 
 Fulsom — California which only leaves two 
 
 thousand two hundred and eleven miles to go by 
 
 coach. This breaks the monotony it 
 
 came very near breaking my back. 
 
 19 " The Pacific Railway" The journey was made in the 
 winter of 1863-4. By the time these notes appear in print, 
 the Pacific Railway will be almost complete from the banks 
 of the Missouri to those of the Sacramento, and travellers will 
 soon be able to make the transit of over three thousand miles 
 from New York City to the capital of California, without 
 leaving the railway car, except to cross a ferry, or to change 
 from one station to another. 
 
THE MORMON THEATRE. 
 
 ■JLlJLMJLMJUL 
 
 A brief description of this building will be found in the notes 
 appended to the lecture. Art emus Ward lectured here on " The Babes 
 in the Wood." It was built by Brigham Young, and is his property. 
 
 ri6 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 117 
 
 The Mormon Theatre. This edifice is the 
 
 exclusive property of Brigham Young. It will 
 comfortably hold 3,000 persons — and I beg you 
 will believe me when I inform you that its interior 
 is quite as brilliant as that of any theatre in 
 London. 20 
 
 80 " Brilliant as that of any theatre in London" Herein 
 Artemus slightly exaggerated. The colouring of the theatre 
 was white and gold, but it was inefficiently lighted with oil 
 lamps. When Brigham Young himself showed us round the 
 theatre, he pointed out, as an instance of his own ingenuity, 
 that the central chandelier was formed out of the wheel of 
 one of his old coaches. The house is now, I believe, lighted 
 with gas. Altogether it is a very wondrous edifice, consider- 
 ing where it is built and who were the builders. At the time 
 of its erection there was no other theatre on the northern 
 
n8 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 The actors are all Mormon amateurs, who 
 charge nothing for their services. 
 
 You must know that very little money is taken 
 at the doors of this theatre. The Mormons 
 mostly pay in grain — and all sorts of articles. 
 
 The night I gave my little lecture there — 
 among my receipts were corn — flour — pork — 
 
 part of the American plateau, no building for a similar pur- 
 pose anywhere for five hundred miles, north, east, south, or 
 west. Many a theatre in the provincial towns of England is 
 not half so substantially built, nor one tithe-part so well ap- 
 pointed. The dressing rooms, wardrobe, tailors' workshop, 
 carpenters' shop, paint room, and library, leave scarcely any- 
 thing to be desired in their completeness. Brigham Young's 
 son-in-law, Mr. Hiram Clawson, the manager, and Mr. John 
 Cane, the stage manager, if they came to London, might 
 render good service at one or two of our metropolitan play- 
 houses. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. n 9 
 
 cheese — chickens on foot and in the 
 
 shell. 
 
 One family went in on a live pig and a man 
 
 attempted to pass a "yaller dog" at the Box 
 Office — but my agent repulsed him. One offered 
 
 me a doll for admission another infants' 
 
 clothing. 1 refused to take that.— — As a 
 
 general rule I do refuse. 
 
 In the middle of the parquet — in a rocking 
 chair — with his hat on — sits Brigham Young. 
 When the play drags — he either goes out or falls 
 into a tranquil sleep. 
 
 A portion of the dress-circle is set apart for 
 the wives of Brigham Young. From ten to 
 twenty of them are usually present. His 
 children fill the entire gallery — and more 
 too. 
 
120 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 The East Side of Main Street — Salt Lake 
 
 City — with a view of the Council Building. 
 
 The legislature of Utah meets there. It is like 
 all legislative bodies. They meet this winter to 
 repeal the laws which they met and made last 
 
 winter and they will meet next winter to repeal 
 
 the laws which they met and made this winter. 
 
 I dislike to speak about it but it was 
 
 in Utah that I made the great speech of my life. 
 I wish you could have heard it. I have a fine 
 education. You may have noticed it. I 
 
 speak six different languages London — 
 
 Chatham — and Dover Margate — Brighton — 
 
MAIN STREET, SALT LAKE CITY 
 
 The building to the extreme right is the House of Legislature, where 
 the representatives of the territory of Utah liold their meetings. The 
 second' house on the right is the Post Office. Main Street is 132 feet in 
 
 breadth. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 123 
 
 and Hastings. My parents sold a cow — and sent 
 me to college when I was quite young. During 
 the vacation I used to teach a school of whales — 
 
 and there's where I learned to spout. 1 don't 
 
 expect applause for a little thing like that. I wish 
 you could have heard that speech — however. If 
 
 Cicero he's dead now he has gone from us 
 
 but if. Old Ciss 21 could have heard that 
 
 effort it would have given him the rinderpest. 
 I'll tell you how it was. There are stationed in 
 
 Utah two regiments of U. S. troops the 21st 
 
 from California — and the 37th from Nevada. The 
 20-onesters asked me to present a stand of colours 
 
 21 " Old Ciss." Here again no description can adequately 
 inform the reader of the drollery which characterized the 
 lecturer. His reference to Cicero was made in the most 
 lugubrious manner, as if he really deplored his death and 
 valued him as a schoolfellow loved and lost. 
 
iH ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 to the 37-sters and I did it in a speech so 
 
 abounding in eloquence of a bold and brilliant 
 
 character and also some sweet talk real 
 
 pretty shop-keeping talk that I worked the 
 
 enthusiasm of those soldiers up to such a 
 
 pitch that they came very near shooting me on the spot. 22 
 
 22 " United States Troops ." Our stay in Utah was rendered 
 especially pleasant by the attentions of the regiment of 
 California Cavalry, then stationed at Fort Douglas in the 
 Wahsatch Mountains, three miles beyond and overlooking 
 the city. General Edward O'Connor, the United States 
 Military Governor of Utah, was especially attentive to the 
 wants of poor Artemus during his severe illness ; and 
 had it not been for the kind attentions of Dr. Williams, the 
 surgeon to the regiment, I doubt if the invalid would have 
 recovered. General O'Connor had then been two years 
 stationed in Utah, but during the whole of that time had 
 refused to have any personal communication with Brigham 
 Young. The Mormon prophet would sit in his private box, 
 and the United States general occupy a seat in the dress-circle 
 of the theatre. They would look at each other frequently 
 through their opera-glasses, but that constituted their whole 
 intimacy. 
 
UPPER PART OF MAIN STREET. 
 
 yyQyyyyyl^yyyy^^^ASy^y^ ^ 
 
 m 
 
 This picture is a continuation of the preceding otic. On the left is a 
 portion of the enclosure wherein the new temple is being built. On the 
 
 right part of the grounds belonging to the second in command in the 
 Mormon Church — Mr. Hcbcr C. Kimball. 
 
BRIGHAM YOUNG'S PALACE. 
 
 To the extreme left is the Lion House. (There is a lion over one of 
 the windows. J It is the harem of the prophet. Every "wife" who 
 inhabits it has a room similarly furnished. They meet in common on 
 the verandah. Brigham Young himself lives with his favourite in the 
 large mid die house . The building with the tower to it on the right is 
 the school-house, for the education of the prophet's children only. 
 128 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 129 
 
 Brigham Young's Harem. These are the 
 
 houses of Brigham Young. The first on the 
 right is the Lion House — so called because a 
 crouching stone lion adorns the central front 
 window. The adjoining small building is Brigham 
 Young's office — and where he receives his visitors. 
 
 The large house in the centre of the picture 
 
 — which displays a huge bee-hive — is called the 
 
 Bee House the bee-hive is supposed to be 
 
 symbolical of the industry of the Mormons. 
 
 Mrs. Brigham Young the first — now quite an old 
 lady — lives here with her children. None of the 
 other wives of the prophet live here. In the rear 
 
1 3 o ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 are the school houses where Brigham Young's 
 children are educated. 
 
 Brigham Young has two hundred wives. 
 
 JuSt think Of that! Oblige me by thinking of that. 
 
 That is — he has eighty actual wives, and he is 
 spiritually married to one hundred and twenty 
 
 more. These spiritual marriages as the 
 
 Mormons call them are contracted with 
 
 aged widows — who think it a great honour to be 
 
 sealed the Mormons call it being sealed 
 
 to the Prophet. 
 
 So we may say he has two hundred wives. 
 He loves not wisely — but two hundred 
 well. He is dreadfully married. He's the 
 
 most married man I ever saw in my life. 
 
 I saw his mother-in-law while I was there. I 
 can't exactly tell you how many there is 
 of her — but it's a good deal. It strikes me that 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 131 
 
 one mother-in-law is about enough to have in a 
 
 family unless you're very fond of excitement. 
 
 A few days before my arrival in Utah — 
 Brigham was married again — to a young and 
 
 really pretty girl 23 but he says he shall stop 
 
 now. He told me confidentially that he shouldn't 
 get married any more. He says that all he wants 
 now is to live in peace for the remainder of his days 
 — and have his dying pillow soothed by the loving 
 
 hands of his family. Well — that's all right 
 
 that's all right — I suppose but if all his 
 
 family soothe his dying pillow — he'll 
 have to go out-doors to die. 
 
 By the way — Shakespeare endorses polygamy. 
 He speaks of the Merry Wives of Windsor. 
 
 How many wives did Mr. Windsor have ? 
 But we will let this pass. 
 
 83 "A really pretty Girl." The daughter of the architect of 
 his new theatre. 
 
1 32 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 Some of these Mormons have terrific families. 
 I lectured one night by invitation in the Mormon 
 
 village of Provost but during the day I rashly 
 
 gave a leading Mormon an order admitting him- 
 self and family. It was before I knew that 
 
 he was much married and they filled the 
 
 room to overflowing. It was a great success 
 b ut I didn't get any money. 
 
 Heber C. Kimball's Harem. Mr. C. 
 
 Kimball is the first vice-president of the Mormon 
 church — and would — consequently — succeed to 
 the full presidency on Brigham Young's death. 
 
 Brother Kimball is a gay and festive cuss of 
 some seventy summers or some'ers there 
 
MR. HEBER C. KIMBALL'S HAREM. 
 
 h 
 
 j^^iy^yyiw 
 
 ^^S^£££^QQQ£SS^^S&OC^iWi 
 
 
 The seraglio of Mr. Kimball is large. Unlike Brigham Young, 
 he does not keep his wives under one roof, but has many buildings in his 
 garden, where he assorts them according to their temper and their 
 adaptability to dwelling together in peace. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE, i 35 
 
 about. He has one thousand head of 
 cattle and a hundred head of wives. 24 
 He says they are awful eaters. 
 
 Mr. Kimball had a son a lovely young- 
 man who was married to ten interesting 
 
 wives. But one day while he was absent 
 
 from home these ten wives went out 
 
 walking with a handsome young man — 
 which so enraged Mr. Kimball's son — which 
 made Mr. Kimball's son so jealous — that he 
 shot himself with a horse pistuel. 
 
 24 " A hundred head of Wives?' It is an authenticated fact 
 that, in an address to his congregation in the tabernacle, 
 Heber C. Kimball once alluded to his wives by the endearing 
 epithet of "my heifers;" and on another occasion politely 
 spoke of them as " his cows." The phraseology may pos- 
 sibly be a slight indication of the refinement of manners 
 prevalent in Salt Lake City. 
 
 H 
 
136 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 The doctor who attended him a very 
 
 scientific man informed me that the bullet 
 
 entered the inner parallelogram of his dia- 
 phragmatic thorax, superinducing membranous 
 hemorrhage in the outer cuticle of his basilicon- 
 thamaturgist. It killed him. I should have 
 thought it would. 
 
 (Soft music. J 25 
 
 I hope his sad end will be a warning to all 
 young wives who go out walking with hand- 
 some young men. Mr. Kimball's son is now 
 
 25 " Soft Musky Here Artemus Ward's pianist (following 
 instructions) sometimes played the dead march from " SauW 
 At other times, the Welsh air of " Poor Mary Anne ;" or any- 
 thing else replete with sadness which might chance to strike 
 his fancy. The effect was irresistibly comic. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 137 
 
 no more. He sleeps beneath the cypress 
 — the myrtle — and the willow. This 
 music is a dirge by the eminent pianist for Mr. 
 Kimball's son. He died by request. 
 
 I regret to say that efforts were made to make 
 a Mormon of me while I was in Utah. 
 
 It was leap-year when I was there — and 
 seventeen young widows the wives of a de- 
 ceased Mormon offered me their hearts and 
 
 hands. I called on them one day — and taking 
 
 their soft white hands in mine which made 
 
 eighteen hands altogether 1 found them 
 
 in tears. 
 
 And I said — "Why is this thus? What is 
 the reason of this thusness? " 
 
1 38 ARTEMUS WARD' 'S LECTURE. 
 
 They hove a sigh seventeen sighs of different 
 
 pii ,e; They said — 
 
 " Oh — soon thou wilt be gonested away !" 
 
 I told them that when I got ready to leave a 
 place I wentested. 
 
 They said — " Doth not like us ? " 
 
 I said— -I doth 1 doth!" 
 
 I also said — " I hope your intentions are 
 honourable — as I am a lone child my parents 
 
 being far — far away. 
 
 They then said — " Wilt not marry us ?" 
 
 I said — " Oh — no it cannot was." : * 
 
 Again they asked me to marry them — and 
 again I declined. When they cried — 
 
TABERNACLE AND BOWERY. 
 
 The Tabernacle is the building to the left ; to the' fight of it, and 
 within the same enclosure, is the Bowery : a large shed with boughs of 
 trees laid over it, the sides being open. In it religious services are held 
 during the summer months. 
 
 i \o 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 141 
 
 " Oh — cruel man ! This is too much oh ! 
 
 too much !" 
 
 I told them that it was on account of 
 the muchness that I declined. 26 
 
 This is the Mormon Temple. 
 
 It is built of adobe — and will hold five thou- 
 sand persons quite comfortably. A full brass and 
 
 26 " That I declined?' I remember one evening party in 
 Salt Lake City to which Artemus Ward and myself went. 
 There were thirty-nine ladies and only seven gentlemen. 
 
1 42 ARTEMUS WARDS LECTURE. 
 
 string band often assists the choir of this church 
 
 and the choir — I may add — is a remarkably 
 
 good one. 
 
 Brigham Young seldom preaches now. The 
 younger elders unless on some special occa- 
 sion -conduct the services. I only heard Mr. 
 
 Young once. He is not an educated man but 
 
 speaks with considerable force and clearness. 
 The day I was there there was nothing coarse in 
 his remarks. 
 
 The foundations of the Temple. 
 
 These are the foundations of the magnificent 
 Temple the Mormons are building. It is to be 
 
FOUNDATIONS OF THE NEW TEMPLE. 
 
 |Mj^ 
 
 \/CiiiiC^^ 
 
 From this picture and that which succeeds may be formed some idea 
 of hoic far the building of the New Temple had progressed at the time 
 of the lecturer's visit. The stones were being shaped into form by 
 masons who contributed their labour gratuitously. 
 
FOUNDATIONS OF THE TEMPLE. 
 
 CONTINUED. 
 
 n n i 
 
 The block is forty rods square, and contains ten acres. The position 
 is 4,300 feet above the level of the sea in latitude 40° 45' 44" N., and 
 longitude 112 6' 8" W. of Greenwich. 
 
 M5 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 147 
 
 built of hewn stone — and will cover several acres 
 of ground. They say it shall eclipse in splendour 
 all other temples in the world. They also say it 
 shall be paved with solid gold. * 
 
 It is perhaps worthy of remark that the archi- 
 tect of this contemplated gorgeous affair repu- 
 diated Mormonism — and is now living in London. 
 
 * "Solid Gold." "Where will the gold be obtained from?" 
 is a question which the visitor might reasonably be expected 
 to ask. Unquestionably the mountains of Utah contain the 
 precious metal, though it has not been the policy of Brigham 
 Young and the chiefs of the Mormon Church to disclose 
 their knowledge of the localities in which it is to be found. 
 There is a current report in Salt Lake City th it nuggets of 
 gold have been picked up within a radius of a few score of 
 miles from the site of the new temple. But the Mormons, 
 instructed by their Church, profess ignorance on the subject. 
 The discovery of large gold mines, and permission to work 
 them, would attract to the valley of Salt Lake a class of visitors 
 not wished for by Brigham Young and his disciples. Next 
 to the construction of the Pacific Railway, nothing would be 
 more conducive to the downfall of Mormonism than Utah 
 becoming known as an extensive gold-field. 
 
148 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 The Temple as it is to be. 
 
 This pretty little picture is from the architect's 
 
 design and cannot therefore — I suppose — be 
 
 called a fancy sketch. 27 
 
 Should the Mormons continue unmolested — I 
 think they will complete this rather remarkable 
 edifice. 
 
 27 " A Fancy Ske/ch." Artemus had the windows of the 
 temple in his panorama cut out and filled in with transparent 
 coloured paper, so that, when lighted from behind, it had the 
 effect of one of the little plaster churches with a piece of 
 lighted candle inside, which the Italian image-boys display 
 at times for sale in the streets. Nothing in the course of the 
 evening pleased Artemus more than to notice the satisfaction 
 with which this meretricious piece of absurdity was received 
 by the audience. 
 
THE TEMPLE AS IT IS TO BE. 
 
 The view is copied from the original drawing by Mr. Truman O. 
 Angell, the architect. There is very little chance under present circum- 
 stances that the Temple will be completed. The formation of the Pacific 
 Railway will, in all probability, cause the Mormons to seek a hoihe 
 
 elsewhere. 
 
 '49 
 
PART OF THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 
 
 fc^^KT^''^ w^pif^r^nv^ MjiAijjA^y Vmvy y y : ■ y 7 /•■ ,^5v|> 
 
 ^QQQQ 
 
 // is situated in the north-eastern corner of Utah Territory to the 
 north-west of the valley of Salt Lake and about eighteen miles front tin- 
 city. Its length is nearly seventy miles ; its breadth from thirty to 
 thirty-five miles. (N.B. — This is the moon in the management oj 
 which Artemus Ward's " moonist" was apt to experience difficulty. ) 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 153 
 
 Great Salt Lake. The great salt dead sea 
 
 of the desert. 
 
 I know of no greater curiosity than this inland 
 sea of thick brine. It is eighty miles wide — and 
 one hundred and thirty miles long. Solid masses 
 of salt are daily washed ashore in immense heaps 
 — and the Mormon in want of salt has only to go 
 to the shore of this lake and fill his cart. Only — 
 the salt for table use has to be subjected to a 
 boiling process. 28 
 
 28 " The Great Salt Lake." A very general mistake prevails 
 among those not better informed that the Mormon capital is 
 built upon the borders of the Salt Lake. There are eighteen 
 miles of distance between them. Not from any part of the 
 
i54 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 These are facts — susceptible of the clearest 
 possible proof. They tell one story about this 
 lake — however — that I have my doubts about. 
 They say a Mormon farmer drove forty head of 
 cattle in there once — and they came out 
 first-rate pickled beef. 
 
 City proper can a view of the Lake be obtained. To get a 
 glimpse of it without journeying towards it, the traveller must 
 ascend to one of the rocky ledges in the range of mountains 
 which back the city. So saline is the water of the lake, that 
 three pailsful of it are said to yield on evaporation one pail- 
 ful of salt. I never saw the experiment tried. 
 
THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 
 
 PRECEDING VIEW CONTINUED. 
 
 This Dead Sea of the Western world is supplied with fresh water 
 from three rivers— the Bear River, the Weber, and the Jordan. The 
 water, according to Captain Burton's statement, contains six times and 
 a half mure solid matter than the average solid constituents of sea 
 ;vatcr . 
 
 1 55 
 
At this part of the entertainment the lights in the room were turned 
 up, and the audience allowed a very brief " interval for refreshments.''' 
 Arlcmus Ward had to recover from the fatigue of attending to tlu- 
 moon. 
 
 '58 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 159 
 
 I sincerely hope you will excuse my absence 
 
 1 am a man short — and have to work the 
 
 moon myself. 29 
 
 I shall be most happy to pay 
 a good salary to any respectable 
 boy of good parentage and edu- 
 cation who is a good moonist. 
 
 20 " The Moon myself y Here Artemus would leave the 
 rostrum for a few moments, and pretend to be engaged 
 behind. The picture was painted for a night-scene, and the 
 effect intended to be produced was that of the moon rising 
 over the lake and rippling on the waters. It was produced in 
 the usual dioramic way, by making the track of the moon 
 transparent and throwing the moon on from the bull's eye of 
 a lantern. When Artemus went behind, the moon would 
 become nervous and nickering, dancing up and down in the 
 most inartistic and undecided manner. The result was that, 
 coupled with the lecturer's oddly expressed apology, the 
 "moon" became one of the best laughed-at parts of the 
 entertainment. 
 
i6o ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 The Endowment House. 30 
 
 In this building the Mormon is initiated into 
 the mysteries of the faith. 
 
 Strange stories are told of the proceedings 
 
 which are held in this building but I have no 
 
 possible means of knowing how true they may be. 
 
 30 " The Endowment Housed To the young ladies of Utah 
 this edifice possesses extreme interest. The Mormon cere- 
 mony of marriage is said to be of the most extraordinary 
 character ; various symbolical scenes being enacted, and the 
 bride and bridegroom invested with sacred garments which 
 they are never to part with. In all Salt Lake I could not find 
 a person who would describe to me the ceremonies of the 
 Endowment House, nor could Artemus or myself obtain 
 admission within its mystic walls. 
 
THE ENDOWMENT HOUSE. 
 
 \/ii£ilfiA/[fi^ 
 
 That which takes place within this building travellers may guess at 
 but are not permitted to know. Jt is where the Mormon marriages are 
 celebrated. On the mountain above a figure out of all proportion to 
 the scenery is supposed to represent Artcmus Ward attacked by a bear 
 in front and a pack of wolves in the rear, 
 
 161 
 
ENTRANCE TO ECHO CANYON. 
 
 SwjSpw^ < 
 
 SB yiA^^ 
 
 7w<& 
 
 High bluffs of yelloto colouf and conglomerate formation, full of 
 small fossils. The buildings at the base constitute Webefs Station, 
 where the coach stops for the mules to be changed, and the passengers 
 to obtain refreshments. 
 
 164 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 165 
 
 Echo Canyon. 
 
 Salt Lake City is fifty-five miles behind us — 
 and this is Echo Canyon — in reaching which we 
 are supposed to have crossed the summit of the 
 Wahsatch Mountains. These ochre-coloured 
 
 bluffs formed of conglomerate sandstone — 
 
 and full of fossils signal the entrance to J:he 
 
 Canyon. At its base lies Weber Station. 
 
 Echo Canyon is about twenty-five miles long. 
 It is really the sublimest thing between the Mis- 
 souri and the Sierra Nevada. The red wall to 
 the left develops further up the Canyon into 
 
 pyramids — buttresses — and castles honey 
 
 combed and fretted in nature's own massive 
 magnificence of architecture. 
 
i66 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 In 1856 — Echo Canyon was the place selected 
 by Brigham Young- for the Mormon General 
 Wells to fortify and make impregnable against 
 the advance of the American army — led by 
 General Albert Sidney Johnson. It was to have 
 
 been the Thermopylae of Mormondom but it 
 
 wasn't. General Wells was to have done 
 Leonidas but he didn't. 
 
 A more cheerful view of the Desert. 
 
 The wild snow storms have left us — and we 
 have thrown our wolf- skin overcoats aside. Cer- 
 tain tribes of far-western Indians bury their dis- 
 tinguished dead by placing them high in air and 
 
 covering them with valuable furs that is a very 
 
 fair representation of these mid-air tombs. Those 
 
THE INDIANS ON THE PLAINS. 
 
 On the right of the picture is the scaffold erected for an Indian 
 grave. The corpse is placed on the tup of it, out of the way of the 
 wolves, though not so protected but what the vultures and other birds 
 of carrion soon render it a mere skeleton. 
 
 167- 
 
ART EMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 169 
 
 animals are horses 1 know they are — because 
 
 my artist says so. I had the picture two years 
 
 before I discovered the fact. The artist came 
 
 to me about six months ago — and said " It is 
 
 useless' to disguise it from you any longer 
 
 they are horses." 31 
 
 It was while crossing this desert that I was 
 surrounded by a band of Ute Indians. They 
 
 were splendidly mounted they were dressed 
 
 in beaver-skins and they were armed with 
 
 rifles — knives — and pistols. 
 
 What could I do ? What could a poor old 
 
 orphan do? I'm a brave man. The day 
 
 before the Battle of Bull's Run I stood in the 
 
 highway while the bullets • those dreadful 
 
 messengers of death were passing all 
 
 around me thickly in waggons on 
 
 31 " They are Horses." Here again Artemus called in the 
 aid of pleasant banter as the most fitting apology for the 
 atrocious badness of the painting. 
 
1 7 o ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 their way to the battle field. 32 But there 
 
 were too many of these Injuns there were 
 
 forty of them — and only one of me and so I 
 
 said — 
 
 " Great Chief — I surrender." His name was 
 Wocky-bocky. 
 
 He dismounted — and approached me. I saw 
 his tomahawk glisten in the morning sunlight. 
 
 Fire was in his eye. Wocky-bocky came very 
 close to me and seized me by the hair of my head. 
 He mingled his swarthy fingers with my golden 
 
 32 " Their way to the battle-field." This was the great joke 
 of Artemus Ward's first lecture, " The Babes in the Wood." 
 He never omitted it in any of his lectures, nor did it lose its 
 power to create laughter by repetition. The audiences at the 
 Egyptian Hall, London, laughed as immoderately at it as did 
 those of Irving Hall, New York, or of the Tremont Temple 
 in Boston. 
 
OUR ENCOUNTER WITH THE INDIANS. 
 
 Utah Territory contains Indians of two races — the Shoslioncs and 
 
 the Utes. The Utes are very friendly with the Mormons, who treat 
 
 them with uniform kindness. It is commonly believed that a secret 
 
 treaty of alliance exists between Brigham Young and the chiefs of the 
 
 Indian tribes. (The left hand portion of the illustration belongs to the 
 
 preceding picture.) 
 
 17' 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 173 
 
 tresses and he rubbed his dreadful Thomas- 
 hawk across my lily-white face. He said — 
 
 • " Torsha arrah darrah mishky bookshean !" 
 
 I told him he was right. 
 
 Wocky-bocky again rubbed his tomahawk 
 across my face, and said — "Wink-ho — loo-boo !" 
 
 Says I — "Mr. Wocky- bocky ' ' — says I 
 
 " Wocky — I have thought so for years — and 
 so's all our family." 
 
 He told me I must go the tent of the Strong- 
 Heart — and eat raw dog. 33 It don't agree with 
 me. I prefer simple food. I prefer pork -pie 
 — because then I know what I'm eating. 
 
 33 " Raw dog." While sojourning for a day in a camp of 
 Sioux Indians we were informed that the warriors of the tribe 
 were accustomed to eat raw dog to give them courage previous 
 to going to battle. Artemus was greatly amused with the 
 information. When, in after years, he became weak and 
 languid, and was called upon to go to lecture, it was a 
 favourite joke with him to inquire, " Kingston, have you got 
 any raw dog?" 
 
 1 
 
1 74 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 But as raw dog was all they proposed to give to 
 me — I had to eat it or starve. So at the expira- 
 tion of two days I seized a tin plate and went 
 to the chief's daughter — and I said to her in a 
 
 silvery voice in a kind of German-silvery 
 
 voice 1 said — 
 
 "Sweet child of the forest, the pale-face wants 
 his dog." 
 
 There was nothing but his paws ! I had 
 paused too long! Which reminds me that 
 
 time passes. A way which time has. 
 
 I was told in my youth to seize opportunity. 
 I once tried to seize one. He was rich. He had 
 diamonds on. As I seized him — he knocked me 
 down. Since then I have learned that he who 
 seizes opportunity sees the penitentiary. 
 
 The Rocky Mountains. 
 
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 
 
 The view may recall to those who have seen it Mr. Bierstadt's 
 celebrated picture. Unfortunately for us, when zee crossed, every inch 
 of the ground was covered with snow-, 
 
 175 
 
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS SCENERY 
 
 This picture is a continuation of the preceding view. In the course 
 of the journey, Artemus Wafd passed a day among an encampment of 
 Sioux, whose numbers must have exceeded three thousand. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 179 
 
 I take it for granted you have heard of these 
 popular mountains. In America they are 
 regarded as a great success, and we all love 
 dearly to talk about them. It is a kind of weak- 
 ness with us. I never knew but one American 
 who hadn't something — sometime — to say about 
 
 the Rocky Mountains and he was a deaf and 
 
 dumb man, who couldn't say anything about 
 nothing. 
 
 But these mountains — whose summits are 
 snow-covered and icy all the year round — are too 
 grand to make fun of. I crossed them in the 
 winter of '64 — in a rough sleigh drawn by four 
 mules. 
 
 This sparkling waterfall is the Laughing- 
 Water alluded to by Mr. Longfellow in his Indian 
 poem — " Higher - Water." The water is 
 higher up there. 
 
 (Music.J 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 The plains of Colorado. 
 
 These are the drear} 7 plains over which we 
 rode for so many weary days. An affecting - inci- 
 dent occurred on these plains some time since, 
 which I am sure you will pardon me for intro- 
 ducing- here. 
 
 On a beautiful June morning — some sixteen 
 years ago 
 
 (Music, very loud till the scene is off.J 
 
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THE PLAINS OF COLORADO. 
 
 This view and the one which follows it convey a faint idea of the 
 barrenness and desolation of a portion of the journey. 
 
CROSSING THE PLAINS. 
 
 AN EMIGRANT CARAVAN. 
 
 Ijjlgiii^^ 
 
 Nearly all the inhabitants of Salt Lake City have had to travel 
 thither in emigrant trains, undergoing countless hardships on the way. 
 The skeletons of animals and the remains of broken-down vehicles serve 
 to mark out the track. 
 
 183 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
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 iron «"vn 1 
 
 
 I'c Kr 
 
 M " (9« Reginald's breast." At this part of the lecture 
 Artemus pretended to tell a story — the piano playing loudly 
 all the time. He continued his narration in excited dumb- 
 show — his lips moving as though he were speaking. For 
 some minutes the audience indulged in unrestrained laughter. 
 
1 86 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 The Prairie on Fire. 
 
 A prairie on fire is one of the wildest and 
 grandest sights that can possibly be imagined. 
 
 These fires occur — of course — in the summer 
 
 — when the grass is dry as tinder and the 
 
 flames rush and roar over the prairie in a manner 
 frightful to behold. They usually burn better 
 than mine is burning to-night. I try to make 
 my prairie burn regularly — and not dis- 
 appoint the public but it is not as 
 
 high-principled as I am. 35 
 
 35 "As high-principled as I am." The scene was a trans- 
 parent one — the light from behind so managed as to give the 
 
THE PRAIRIE ON FIRE. 
 
 * i* 
 
 F«yW^ 
 
 m 
 
 §p %JAAAA^^ 
 
 Artemus Ward had an opportunity of seeing part of a Prairie on 
 Fire, just as lie entered the State of Kansas. The grandeur of the 
 scene made a very deep impression upon him. He frequently alluded 
 ta it in conversation. 
 
 [8; 
 
THE PRAIRIE ON FIRE. 
 
 CONTINUED. 
 
 The effect of the Prairie being on Fife was illustrated in the 
 panorama by means of a revolving cloth behind; a portion of the 
 picture being transparent. 
 
 189 
 
BRIGHAM YOUNG AT HO.MK. 
 
 iSSJ^W WW WWW yilj^W^ 
 
 This is, of course, a mere fancy sketch. It was roughly designed 
 by Arteinus Ward himself. According to his own statement, made in 
 a very playful manner, it represents that which he saw on an afternoon 
 passed with the prophet at the palace. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 193 
 
 Brigham Young at home. 
 
 The last picture I have to show you represents 
 Mr. Brigham Young in the bosom of his family. 
 His family is large — and the olive branches 
 around his table are in a very tangled condition. 
 He is more a father than any man I know. 
 
 When at home as you here see him he 
 
 ought to be very happy with sixty wives 
 
 effect of the prairie on fire. Artemus enjoyed the joke of 
 letting the fire go out occasionally, and then allowing it to 
 relight itself. 
 
i 9 4 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 to minister to his comforts — and twice 
 sixty children to soothe his distracted 
 
 mind. Ah! my friends what is home without 
 
 a family ? 
 
 What will become of Mormonism ? We all 
 
 know and admit it to be a hideous wrong a 
 
 great immoral stain upon the 'scutcheon of the 
 United States. My belief is that its existence is 
 dependent upon the life of Brigham Young. 
 His administrative ability holds the system to- 
 gether his power of will maintains it as the 
 
 faith of a community. When he dies — Mor- 
 monism will die too. The men who are around 
 him have neither his talent nor his energy. By 
 means of his strength it is held together. When 
 he falls — Mormonism will also fall to pieces. 
 
ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 195 
 
 36 That lion — you perceive — has a tail. It is a 
 long one already. Like mine — it is to be con- 
 tinued in our next. 37 
 
 THE END. 
 
 86 " That Lion has a fail" The lion on a pedestal, as 
 painted in the panorama — its tail outstretched like that of the 
 leonine adornment to Northumberland House, was a pure 
 piece of frolic on the part of the entertainer. Brigham 
 Young certainly adopts the lion as a Mormon emblem. A 
 beehive and a lion, suggestive of industry and strength, are 
 the symbols of the Mormons in Salt Lake City. 
 
 37 "To be continued in our next." To re-visit Utah, and to 
 do another and a better lecture about it was a favourite idea 
 of Artemus Ward. Another fancy that he had was to visit the 
 
i 9 6 ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE. 
 
 stranger countries of the Eastern world and find in some of 
 them matter for a humorous lecture. While ill in Utah, he 
 read Mr. Layard's book on Nineveh, left behind at the hotel 
 by a traveller passing through Salt Lake. Mr. Layard's refer- 
 ence to the Yezedi, or " Devil worshippers," took powerful 
 hold on the imagination of the reader. During our trip home 
 across the plains he would often, sometimes in jest and some- 
 times in earnest, chat about a trip to Asia to see the " Devil 
 worshippers." Naturally his inclinations were nomadic, and 
 had a longer life been granted to him I believe that he would 
 have seen more of the surface of this globe than even the 
 generality of his countrymen see, much as they are accustomed 
 to travel. Within about the same distance from Portland in 
 England that his own birth-place is from Portland in Maine, 
 his travels came to an end. He died at Southampton. His 
 great wish was for strength to return to his home, that he 
 might die with the face of his own mother bending over him, 
 and in the cottage where he was born. 
 
 " Ccelumque 
 
 adspicit et mortens dulces reminiscitur argos." 
 
 E. P. H. 
 
THE PROSCENIUM 
 
 WITH THE CURTAIN DOWN. 
 
 jgjSjiii^^ 
 
 The curtain fell for the last time on Wednesday, the 23rd of January , 
 1867. Artemus Ward had to break off the lecture abruptly. He 
 never lectured again. 
 
 197 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
"THE TIMES" NOTICE. 
 
 " Egyptian Hall. — Before a large audience, comprising 
 an extraordinary number of literary celebrities, Mr. Artemus 
 Ward, the noted American humorist, made his first appearance 
 as a public lecturer on Tuesday evening, the place selected for 
 the display of his quaint oratory being the room long tenanted 
 by Mr. Arthur Sketchley. His first entrance on the platform 
 was the signal for loud and continuous laughter and applause, 
 denoting a degree of expectation which a nervous man might 
 have feared to encounter. However, his first sentences, and 
 the way in which they were received, amply sufficed to prove 
 that his success was certain. The dialect of Artemus bears a 
 less evident mark of the Western World than that of many 
 American actors, who would fain merge their own peculiarities 
 in the delineation of English character; but his jokes are of that 
 true Transatlantic type, to which no nation beyond the limits 
 of the States can offer any parallel. These jokes he lets fall 
 with an air of profound unconsciousness — we may almost say 
 melancholy — which is irresistibly droll, aided as it is by the 
 effect of a figure singularly gaunt and lean and a face to match. 
 And he has found an audience by whom his caustic humour is 
 thoroughly appreciated. Not one of the odd pleasantries 
 slipped out with such imperturbable gravity misses its mark, 
 and scarcely a minute elapses at the end of which the sedate 
 Artemus is not forced to pause till the roar of mirth has sub- 
 sided. There is certainly this foundation for an entente 
 cordiale between the two countries calling themselves Anglo- 
 Saxon, that the Englishman, puzzled by Yankee politics, 
 thoroughly relishes Yankee jokes, though they are not in the 
 least like his own. When two persons laugh together, they 
 cannot hate each other much so long as the lausrh continues. 
 
NOTICE. 
 
 The subject of Artemus Ward's lecture is a visit to the 
 Mormons, copiously illustrated by a series of moving pic- 
 tures, not much to be commended as works of art, but for the 
 most part well enough executed to give (fidelity granted) a 
 notion of life as it is among the remarkable inhabitants of 
 Utah. Nor let the connoisseur, who detects the shortcomings 
 of some of these pictures, fancy that he has discovered a flaw 
 in the armour of the doughty Artemus. That astute gentle- 
 man knows their worth as well as anybody else, and while he 
 ostensibly extols them, as a showman is bound to do, he every 
 now and then holds them up to ridicule in a vein of the 
 deepest irony. In one case a palpable error of perspective, 
 by which a man is made equal in size to a mountain, has 
 been purposely committed, and the shouts of laughter that 
 arise as soon as the ridiculous picture appears is tremendous. 
 But there is no mirth in the face of Artemus ; he seems even 
 deaf to the roar ; and when he proceeds to the explanation 
 of the landscape, he touches on the ridiculous point in a slur- 
 ring way that provokes a new explosion. 
 
 The particulars of the lecture we need not describe. Many 
 accounts of the Mormons, more or less credible, and all 
 authenticated, have been given by serious historians, and Mr. 
 W. H. Dixon, who has just returned from Utah to London, 
 is said to have brought with him new stores of solid informa- 
 tion. But to most of us Mormonism is still a mystery, and 
 under those circumstances a lecturer who has professedly 
 visited a country for the sake more of picking up fun than 
 of sifting facts, and whose chief object it must be to make 
 his narrative amusing, can scarcely be accepted as an 
 authority. We will, therefore, content ourselves with stating 
 that the lecture is entertaining to such a degree that to those 
 who seek amusement its brevity is its only fault ; that it is 
 utterly free from offence, though the opportunities for offence 
 given by the subject of Mormonism are obviously numerous ; 
 and that it is interspersed, not only with irresistible jokes, 
 but with shrewd remarks, proving that Artemus Ward is a 
 man of reflection, as well as a consummate humorist." 
 
B-ttTFTl 
 
 km 
 
 m 
 
 PICCADILLY 
 
 Every Night {except Saturday) at 8, 
 
 SATURDAY MORNINGS at 3. 
 
 AMONG THE MORMONS. 
 
 — ^?m<m^^ — 
 
 During the Vacation tho Hall has been carefully Swept out, 
 and a new Door-Knob has been added to the Door, 
 
 Mr. Artemus Ward will call on the Citizens of London, at their residences, 
 and explain any jokes in his narrative which they may not understand. 
 
 A person of long-established integrity will take excellent care of Bonnets, 
 Cloaks, etc., during the Entertainment ; the Audience better leave their 
 money, however, with Mr. Ward ; he will return it to them in a day or 
 two, or invest it for them in America as they may think best. 
 
 203 
 
§T Nobody must say that he likes the Lecture unless he wishes to be 
 thought eccentric ; and nobody must say that ho doesn't like it unless 
 he really is eccentric. (This requires thinking over, but it will amply 
 repay perusal.) 
 
 The Panorama used to Illustrate Mr. WARD'S Narrative is 
 rather worse than Panoramas usually are. 
 
 Mr. Ward will not be responsible for any debts of his own contracting. 
 
 ipm®©iBA 
 
 i. 
 
 APPEARANCE OF ARTEMUS WARD. 
 
 Who will be greeted with applause, iggf The Stall-keeper is particularly 
 requested to attend to this. Jg$l When quiet has been restored, the 
 Lecturer will present a rather frisky prologue, of about ten minutes in 
 length, and of nearly the same width. It perhaps isn't necessary to speak 
 of the depth. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE PICTUEES COMMENCE HERE, the first one being a view 
 of the California Steamship. Large crowd of citizens on the wharf, who 
 appear to be entirely willing that Artemus Wahu shall go. " Bless you, 
 Sir!" they say. "Don't hurry about coming back. Stay away for 
 years, if you want to ! " It was very touching. Disgraceful treatment of 
 the passengers, who are obliged to go forward to smoke pipes, while the 
 steamer herself is allowed 2 Smoke Pipes amid- ships. At Panama. A 
 glance at Mexico. 
 204 
 
III. 
 The Land of Gold. 
 
 Montgomery Street, San Francisco. The Gold Bricks. Street Scenes. 
 " The Orphan Cahrnan, or The Mule Driver's Step-Father." The Chinese 
 Theatre. Sixteen square-yards of a Chinese Comic Song. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Land of Silver. 
 
 Virginia City, the wild young metropolis of the new Silver State. 
 Fortunes are made there in a day. There are instances on record of 
 youDg men going to this place without a shilling — poor and friendless — 
 yet hy energy, intelligence, and a careful disregard to husiness, they have 
 been enabled to leave there, owing hundreds of pounds. 
 
 V. 
 
 The Great Desert at Night. 
 
 A dreary waste of sand. The sand isn't worth saving, however. 
 Indians occupy yonder mountains. Little Injuns seen in the distance 
 trundling their war-whoops. 
 
 VI. 
 
 A Bird's-eye View of Great Salt 
 Lake City. 
 
 With some entirely descriptive talk. 
 VII. 
 
 Main Street, East Side. 
 
 The Salt Lake Hotel, which is conducted on Temperance principles. 
 The landlord sells nothing stronger than salt butter. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Mormon Theatre. 
 
 The Lady of Lyons was produced here a short time since, but failed to 
 satisfy a Mormon audience, on account of there being only one Pauline in 
 it. The play was revised at once. It was presented the next night, with 
 fifteen Paulines in the cast, and was a perfect success, igg* All these 
 statements may be regarded as strictly true. Mr. Wabd would not 
 deceive an infant. 
 
IX. 
 
 Main Street, West Side. 
 
 This beiDg a view of Maia Street, West Side, it is naturally a view of 
 the West Side of Main Street. 
 
 X. 
 
 Brigham Young's Harem. 
 
 Mr. Young is an indulgent father, and a numerous husband. For 
 further particulars call on Mr. Ward, at Egyptian Hall, any Evening 
 this Week. This paragraph is intended to blend business with amusement. 
 
 XL 
 
 Heber C. Kimball's Harem. 
 
 We have only to repeat here the pleasant remarks above in regard to 
 Brigham. 
 
 INTERMISSION" OF FIVE MINUTES. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Tabernacle. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The Temple as it is. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The Temple as it is to be. 
 
 xv. 
 The Great Salt Lake. 
 
 206 
 
XVI. 
 
 The Endowment House. 
 
 The Mormon is initiated into the mysteries of his faith here. The 
 Mormon's religion is singular, and his wives are plural. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Echo Canyon. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The Desert, again. 
 
 A more cheerful view. The Plains of Colorado. The Colorado 
 Mountains "might have been seen" in the distance, if the Artist had 
 painted 'em. But he is prejudiced against mountains, because his uncle 
 once got lost on one. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Brigham Young and his wives. The pretty girls of Utah mostly 
 marry Young. 
 
 XX. 
 
 The Rocky Mountains. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The Plains of Nebraska, 
 
 . XXII. 
 
 The Prairie on Fire. 
 
RECOMMENDATIONS. 
 
 Totxes, Oct. 20th, 1866. 
 Mr. ARTEMVS WARD, 
 
 My dear Sir, — My wife was dangerously unwell for over sixteen 
 years. She was so weak that she could not lift a teaspoon to her mouth. 
 But in a fortunate moment she commenced reading one of your lectures. 
 She got hetter at once. She gained strength so rapidly that she lifted 
 the cottage piano quite a distance from the floor, and then tipped it over 
 on to her mother-in-law, with whom she had had some little trouble. 
 We like your lectures very much. Please send me a barrel of them. If 
 you should require any more recommendations you can get any number 
 of them in this place, at two shillings each, the price I charge for this 
 one, and I trust you may be ever happy. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 Yours truly, and so is my wife, 
 
 R. SPRINGERS. 
 
 An American correspondent of a distinguished journal in Yorkshire 
 thus speaks of Mr. Wa.kd's power as an Orator : — 
 
 "It was a grand scene, Mr Ahtemus Ward standing on the platform, 
 talking ; many of the audience sleeping tranquilly in their seats ; others 
 leaving the room and not returning ; others crying like a child at some 
 of the jokes— all, all formed a most impressive scene, and showed the 
 powers of this remarkable orator. And when he announced that he 
 should never lecture in that town again, the applause was absolutely 
 deafening." 
 
 Doors open at Half-past Seven, commence at Eight. 
 Conclude at Half-past Nine. 
 
 EVERY EVENING EXCEPT SATURDAY. 
 
 SATURDAY AFTERNOONS at 3 p.m. 
 208 
 
ARTEMUS WARD, 
 $M$ ^programme* 
 
 Dodworth Hall, 806, Broadway. 
 
 OPEN EVERY EVENING. 
 
 I . — Introductory. 
 
 2. — The Steamer Ariel, en route. 
 
 3. — San Francisco. 
 
 i. — The Washoe Silver Region. 
 
 5.— The Plains. 
 
 6.— The City of Saints. 
 
 7.— A Mormon Hotel. 
 
 8. — Brigham Young's Theatre. 
 
 9. — The Council-House. 
 
 10. — The Home of Brigham Young. 
 
 11. — Heber C. Kimball's Seraglio. 
 
 12. — The Mormon House of Worship. 
 
 13. — Foundations of the New Temple. 
 
 14. — Architect's View of the Temple when finished. 
 
 15. — The Great Dead Sea of the Desert. 
 
 16.— The House of Mystery. 
 
 17.— The Canon. 
 
 18. — Mid- Air Sepulture. 
 
 19. — A Nice Family Party at Brigham Young's. 
 
 209 
 
It requires a large number of Artists to produce this Entertainment. 
 The casual observer can form no idea of the quantity of unfettered genius 
 that is soaring, like a healthy Eagle, round this Hall in connection with 
 this Entertainment. In fact, the following gifted persons compose the 
 
 Official iwreau. 
 
 Secretary of the Exterior Mr. E. P. Hingston. 
 
 •Secretary of the Treasury Herr Max Field, 
 
 (Pupil oi Signor 'i'homaso Jacksoni.) 
 
 Mechanical Director and Professor of Carpentry Signor G. Wilsoni. 
 
 Crankist Mons. Aleck. 
 
 Assistant Crankist Boy (orphan). 
 
 Artists Messrs. Hilliard & Maeder. 
 
 Reserved Chairists Messrs. Pereee & Jerome. 
 
 Moppist Signorina O'Flaherty. 
 
 Broomist Mile. Topsia de St. Moke. 
 
 Hired Man John. 
 
 Fighting Editor Chevalier McArone. 
 
 Dutchman By a Polish Refugee, named McFinnigin. 
 
 Doortendist , Mobs. Jacques Ridere. 
 
 Gas Man Artemus Ward. 
 
 This Entertainment will open with music. The Soldiers' Chorus from 
 " Faust." rgSg° First time in this city, ^ggj 
 
 Next comes a jocund and discursive preamble, calculated to show what 
 a good education the Lecturer has. 
 
 View the first is a sea- view. — Ariel navigation. — Normal school of 
 whales in tho distance. — Isthmus of Panama. — Interesting interview with 
 Old Panama himself, who makes all the hats. Old Pan. is a likely sort of 
 man. 
 
 * * 
 
 San Francisco. — City with a vigilant government. — Miners allowed to 
 vote. Old inhabitants so rich that they ha\ e legs with golden calves to 
 them. 
 210 
 
Town in the Silver region. — Good quarters to be found there. — 
 Playful population, fond of high-low-jack and homicide. — Silver lying 
 around loose. — Thefts of it termed silver-guilt. 
 
 The Plains in "Winter. — A wild Moor, like Othello. — Mountains in tho 
 distance forty thousand miles above the level of the highest sea (Musiani's 
 rhest C included). — If you don't believe this you can go there and measure 
 them for yourself. 
 
 * » 
 
 Mormondom, sometimes called the City of the Plain, but wrongly ; 
 the women are quite pretty. — View of Old Poly Gamy's house, &c. 
 
 The Salt Lake Hotel. — Stage just come in from its overland route and 
 retreat from the Indians. — Temperance house. — No bar nearer than Salt 
 Lake sand-bars. — Miners in shirts "like Artemus Ward his Programme — 
 they are read and will wash. 
 
 Mormon Theatre, where Artemus Ward lectured. — Mormons like 
 theatricals, and had rather go to the Play-house than to the Work-house, 
 any time. — Private boxes reserved for the ears of Brother Brigham's 
 wives. 
 
 intermission of JFibe intimites. 
 
 Territorial State-House. — Seat of the Legislature. —About as fair a 
 collection as that at Albany — and we " can't say no fairer than that." 
 
 Residence of Brigham Young and his wives. — Two hundred souls with 
 but a single thought, Two hundred hearts that beat as one. 
 
 211 
 
Seraglio of Heber C. Kimball. — Home of the Queens of Heber. — No 
 relatives of the Queen of Sheba. — They are a nice gang of darlings. 
 
 Mormon Tabernacle, where the men espouse Mormonism and the 
 women espouse Brother Brigham and his Elders as spiritual Physicians, 
 convicted of bad doct'rin. 
 
 * * 
 
 Foundations of the Temple. — Beginning of a healthy little job.— 
 Temple to enclose all out-doors, and be paved with gold at a premium. 
 
 The Temple when finished. — Mormon idea of a meeting-house. — 
 N.B. It will be bigger, probably, than Dodworth Hall. — One of the 
 figures in the foreground is intended for Heber C. Kimball. — You can 
 see, by the expression of his back, that he is thinking what a great man 
 Joseph Smith was. 
 
 *** 
 
 The Great Salt Lake. — Water actually thick with salt — too saline to 
 sail in. — Mariners rocked on the bosom of this deep with rock salt. — The 
 water isn't very good to drink. 
 
 House where Mormons are initiated. — Very secret and mysterious 
 ceremonies. — Anybody can easily find out all about them though, by going 
 out there and becoming a Mormon. 
 
 Echo Canon. — A rough bluff sort of affair. — Great Echo. — When 
 Artemus Ward went through, he heard the echoes of some things the 
 Indians said there about four years and a half ago. 
 
 The Plains again, with some noble savages, both in the live and dead 
 state. — The dead one on the high shelf was killed in a Fratricidal 
 Struggle. — They are always having Fratricidal Struggles out in that line 
 of country.— It would be a good place for an enterprising Coroner to 
 locate. 
 
 212 
 
Brigham Young surrounded by his wives. — These ladies are simply 
 too numerous to mention. 
 
 tgg 3 Those of the Audience who do not feel offended with Artemus 
 Ward are cordially invited to call upon him, often, at his fine new house 
 in Brooklyn. His house is on the right hand side as you cross the Ferry, 
 and may he easily distinguished from the other houses by its having a 
 Cupola and a Mortgage on it. 
 
 tgif Soldiers on the battle-field will be admitted to this Entertainment 
 gratis. 
 
 * 
 
 ig^" The Indians on the Overland Boute live on Boutes and Herbs. 
 They are an intemperate people. They drink with impunity, or anybody 
 who invites them. 
 
 Igg^ Artemus Ward delivered Lectures before 
 
 ALL THE CROWNED HEADS OF EUROPE 
 
 ever thought of delivering lectures. 
 
 TICKETS 50 CTS. RESERVED CHAIRS $1. 
 
 Doors open at 7.30 P.M. ; Entertainment to commence at 8. 
 
 It^ The Piano used is from the celebrated factory of Messrs. 
 Chickekino & Sons, 653, Broadway. 
 
 The Cabinet Organ is from the famous factory of Messrs. Mason 
 & Hamlin, Boston, and is furnished by Masox Brothebs, 7 Mercer 
 Street, New York. 
 
 213 
 
{ Y^uyi^ t 
 
 JUD1) AM) GLASS, PRINTERS, PHOENIX WOlthS, I.UKUOH. 
 
[Immediately, in 2 vols., 8w.] 
 
 THE 
 
 GENIAL SHOWMAN; 
 
 BEING REMINISCENCES OP 
 
 THE LIFE OF ARTEMUS WARD, 
 
 PICTURES OF A SHOWMAN'S CAREER 
 
 IN THE WESTERN WORLD. 
 
 EDWARD P. HINGSTON, 
 
 London : 
 JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY. 
 
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VERY IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS. 
 
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