lars. "This, mind you," he used to say, "is in very hard cash, an
article altogether superior to that of my friend Charles Reade."

[Illustration: Artemas Ward]

His idea was to set aside out of his earnings enough to make him
independent, and then to give up "this mountebank business," as he
called it. He had a great respect for scholarly culture and personal
respectability, and thought that if he could get time and health he
might do something "in the genteel comedy line." He had a humorous novel
in view, and a series of more aspiring comic essays than any he had
attempted.

Often he alluded to the opening for an American magazine, "not quite so
highfalutin as the Atlantic nor so popular as Harper's." His mind was
beginning to soar above the showman and merrymaker. His manners had
always been captivating. Except for the nervous worry of ill-health, he
was the kind-hearted, unaffected Artemus of old, loving as a girl and
liberal as a prince. He once showed me his daybook in which were noted
down over five hundred dollars lent out in small sums to indigent
Americans.

"Why," said I, "you will never get half of it back."

"Of course not," he said, "but do you think I can afford to have a lot
of loose fellows black-guarding me at home because I wouldn't let them
have a sovereign or so over here?"

There was no lack of independence, however, about him. The benefit which
he gave Mrs. Jefferson Davis in New Orleans, which was denounced at
the North as toadying to the Rebels, proceeded from a wholly different
motive. He took a kindly interest in the case because it was represented
to him as one of suffering, and knew very well at the time that his
bounty would meet with detraction.

He used to relate with gusto an interview he once had with Murat
Halstead, who had printed a tart paragraph about him. He went into the
office of the Cincinnati editor, and began in his usual jocose way
to ask for the needful correction. Halstead resented the proffered
familiarity, when Artemus told him flatly, suddenly changing front, that
he "didn't care a d--n for the Commercial, and the whole establishment
might go to hell." Next day the paper appeared with a handsome amende,
and the two became excellent friends. "I have no doubt," said Artemus,
"that if I had whined or begged, I should have disgusted Halstead, and
he would have put it to me tighter. As it was, he concluded that I was
not a sneak, and treated me like a gentleman."

A