in Picadilly, as I have said, were just opposite the Hall, but
he could not go backward and forward without assistance. It was painful
in the extreme to see the man who was undergoing tortures behind the
curtain step lightly before the audience amid a burst of merriment, and
for more than an hour sustain the part of jester, tossing his cap and
jingling his bells, a painted death's head, for he had to rouge his face
to hide the pallor.

His buoyancy forsook him. He was occasionally nervous and fretful. The
fog, he declared, felt like a winding sheet, enwrapping and strangling
him. At one of his entertainments he made a grim, serio-comic allusion
to this. "But," cried he as he came off the stage, "that was not a hit,
was it? The English are scary about death. I'll have to cut it out."

He had become a contributor to Punch, a lucky rather than smart business
stroke, for it was not of his own initiation. He did not continue
his contributions after he began to appear before the public, and the
discontinuance was made the occasion of some ill-natured remarks in
certain American papers, which very much wounded him. They were largely
circulated and credited at the time, the charge being that Messrs.
Bradbury and Evans, the publishers of the English charivari, had broken
with him because the English would not have him. The truth is that their
original proposal was made to him, not by him to them, the price named
being fifteen guineas a letter. He asked permission to duplicate the
arrangement with some New York periodical, so as to secure an American
copyright. This they refused. I read the correspondence at the time.
"Our aim," they said, "in making the engagement, had reference to
our own circulation in the United States, which exceeds twenty-seven
thousand weekly."

I suggested to Artemus that he enter his book, "Artemus Ward in London,"
in advance, and he did write to Oakey Hall, his New York lawyer, to
that effect. Before he received an answer from Hall he got Carleton's
advertisement announcing the book. Considering this a piratical design
on the part of Carleton, he addressed that enterprising publisher
a savage letter, but the matter was ultimately cleared up to his
satisfaction, for he said just before we parted: "It was all a mistake
about Carleton. I did him an injustice and mean to ask his pardon.
He has behaved very handsomely to me." Then the letters reappeared in
Punch.

V

Whatever may be thought of th