the inadequate
nature of the panorama which Browne had had made to illustrate his
lecture. Occasionally some hitch would occur in the machinery of this
and the lecturer would leave the rostrum for a few moments to "work the
moon" that shone upon the Great Salt Lake, apologizing on his return on
the ground that he was "a man short" and offering "to pay a good salary
to any respectable boy of good parentage and education who is a good
moonist." When it gradually dawned upon the British intellect that these
and similar devices of the lecturer--such as the soft music which he had
the pianist play at pathetic passages--nay, that the panorama and even
the lecture itself were of a humorous intention, the joke began to take,
and Artemus's success in England became assured. He was employed as one
of the editors of _Punch_, but died at Southampton in the year following.

Some of Artemus Ward's effects were produced by cacography or bad
spelling, but there was genius in the wildly erratic way in which he
handled even this rather low order of humor. It is a curious commentary
on the wretchedness of our English orthography that the phonetic spelling
of a word, as for example, _wuz_ for _was_, should be {567} in itself an
occasion of mirth. Other verbal effects of a different kind were among
his devices, as in the passage where the seventeen widows of a deceased
Mormon offered themselves to Artemus.

"And I said, 'Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thusness?'
They hove a sigh--seventeen sighs of different size. They said--

"'O, soon thou will 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--I doth.'

"I also said, 'I hope your intentions are honorable, as I am a lone
child--my parents being far--far away.'

"They then said, 'Wilt not marry us?'

"I said, 'O no, it cannot was.'

"When they cried, 'O cruel man! this is too much!--O! too much,' I told
them that it was on account of the muchness that I declined."

It is hard to define the difference between the humor of one writer and
another, or of one nation and another. It can be felt and can be
illustrated by quoting examples, but scarcely described in general terms.
It has been said of that class of American humorists of which Artemus
Ward is a representative that their peculiarity consists in extravagance,
surprise, audacity and irreverence. But all these qualit