Artemus Ward Poem by Alexander Anderson

I like Artemus Ward, that quaint
Rough, sturdy, antiquated Showman,
Who travell'd Yankee-land to paint
The social ills in man and woman;
Who when he found some growing vice
In need of moral exhibition,
Threw out his handbills in a trice,
And drew his show into position;


Then ground his organ with a smile
Of humour on his comic features,
As he prepared himself the while
To edify misguided creatures;
Who, when some happy 'goak' escaped,
That made them gape and grin like ****s,
Together fifteen cents they scraped,
And hurried in to see his 'figgers.'


I like his style, so rich and rife
With that delicious chaff and banter,
That tickles up your inward life,
And pricks your spirit to a canter:
Quaint sayings, oddly said yet trite,
And maxims peeping from their dwelling
Of words made shorter to the sight
By quips of most eccentric spelling.


What cared he how he wrote or spell'd,
Or shorten'd diphthongs in their stature?
The nicer rules were to be held
As checks on his nomadic nature.
A foe to other tame pursuits,
He lived but in his pet direction
Of 'moril snaiks' and 'wax statoots,'
For fallen man's minute inspection.


He had his pride, too, in his way,
And liked his own opinion vastly,
And chuckled when he could display
Some sparkling 'eppygram' in—lastly.
Nor cared he for a scrape or two—
For such things made him turn adviser,
And place them in a comic view,
To make his tickled reader wiser.


So when I lift him from the shelf
To read—although I own that no man
Has less of fancy than myself—
At once before me stands the Showman.
I listen to his 'goaks,' and find
That I, made mellow with his chaffing,
Must bless the Molière of his kind,
And make his panegyric laughing.