little dressing gowns and bed slippers, made a dash for the room where the Christmas things were always placed. The older one carried a candle which gave out a feeble light. The other followed behind through the silent house. They were very impatient and eager, but when they reached the door of the sitting room they stopped, for they saw that another child was before them.

It was a delicate little creature, sitting in her white night gown, with two rumpled funny braids falling down her back, and she seemed to be weeping. As they watched, she arose, and putting out one slender finger as a child does when she counts, she made sure over and over again—three sad times that there were only two stockings and two piles of toys! Only those and no

more.

The little figure looked so familiar that the boys started toward it, but just then, putting up her arm and bowing her face in it, as Elsbeth had been used to do when she wept or was offended, the little thing glided away and went out. That's what the boys said. It went out as a candle goes out.

They ran and woke their parents with the tale, and all the house was searched in a wonderment, and disbelief, and hope, and tumult! But nothing was found. For nights they watched. But there was only the silent house. Only the empty rooms. They told the boys they must have been mistaken. But the boys shook their heads.

"We know our Elsbeth," said they. "It was our Elsbeth, cryin' 'cause she hadn't no stockin' an' no toys, and we would have given her

all ours, only she went out jus’ went out!"

Alack!

The next Christmas I helped with the little festival.. It was none of my affair, but I asked to help, and they let me, and when we were all through there were three stockings and three piles of toys, and in the could think of that my dear child largest one was all the things that I would love. I locked the boys' chamber that night, and I slept on the divan in the parlor off the sittingroom. I slept but little, and the white and still that I think I must night was very still-so windless and have heard the slightest noise. Yet I heard none. Had I been in my grave I think my ears would not have remained more unsaluted.

Yet when daylight came and I went to unlock the boys' bedchamber door, I saw that the stocking and all the treasures which I had bought for my little godchild were gone. There was not a vestige of them remaining.

Of course we told the boys nothhome and buried myself once more ing. As for me, after dinner I went in my history, and so interested was I that midnight came without my knowing it. I should not have looked

up at all, I suppose, to become aware of the time, had it not been for a faint, sweet sound as of a child striking a stringed instrument. It was so delicate and so remote that I hardly heard it, but so joyous and tender that I could not but listen, and when I heard it a second time it seemed as if I caught the echo of a child's laugh. At first I was puzzled. Then I remembered the little autoharp I had placed among the other things in that pile of vanished toys. I said aloud :

"Farewell, dear little ghost. Go rest. Rest in joy, dear little ghost. Farewell, farewell."

That was years ago, but there has been silence since. Elsbeth was always an obedient little thing.

ARTEMUS WARD.

More than thirty years have elapsed, since Artemus Ward, one of our greatest American humorists, died at the early age of thirty-three. Yet he had already won for himself a world-wide fame, and more wondrous still-his writings, which pleased and amused our fathers, which at that time created mirth and laughter, are to this day as fresh, as merrymaking and as funny as when they were written. Wondrous I say, because only few humorous writers can boast of such a longevity of their, in most cases but ephemeric muse. What our fathers have laughed over, we very often can see nothing funny in, yet the quaint oddities of Artemus Ward have preserved their freshness through all these long years, their comely humor still works its mirth

provoking charm upon us the-end-ofthe-century, matter-of-fact children. Truly there must be merit in them, the sterling qualities of a humorous genius. Not the least proof that his books are still in demand, read and enjoyed to this day, is the fact, that the publishers and we all know what conservative and cautious business men publishers as a rule arehave just brought out a new complete edition, (*) printed from new plates on excellent paper, and illustrated with old-fashioned, but characteristic illustrations to meet the demand! And we, younger people, who were deprived of the pleasure of hearing Artemus Ward, the humorist, deliver his funny lectures, may be glad and thankful to find amusement and diversion in reading them.

Artemus Ward combined wit and humor to an exceptional degree. Nothing absurd or genial, that could provoke fun or mirth escaped him. He was an astute observer and gives us the humorous side of his observations in an unobtrusive, yet irresistibly effective manner. We must laugh with him and forget for the time the earnest and drag of our materialistic life. As a critic said of him: "His imperturbable coolness, his serious preposterousness, and his

(*) The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne). With a Biographical Sketch, by Melville D. Landon (Eli Perkins), and many Humorous Illustrations. New Edition. Svo. cloth. Price $1.50. By mail $1.65.

solemnly assumed irreverence and plainness of burlesque suggestion were unsurpassed."

The new edition of Artemus Ward's complete works is prefaced with an excellent biographical sketch of him by Eli Perkins (Melville D. Landon), from which I gather the following few facts, which may suffice to acquaint the readers with the genial humorist and to induce them to form a still closer acquaintanceship with his book.

Artemus ward is the merely incidental pseudonym of Charles Farrar Browne, with which he signed his first letter in the Cleveland Plaindealer in 1858. It is the famous "Business Letter," to be found at the beginning of the new edition before me (on page 27) which has been reprinted by hundreds of newspapers, and which was the foundation stone of his literary fame. He was born at Waterford, Maine, on the 26th of April, 1834, and obtained there but a scanty school education. At an early age he was apprenticed to a printer, and at fifteen we find him in the office of the Carpet Bag, a paper published in Boston, edited by B. P. Shillaber, and counting among its contributors Charles G. Halpine and John G. Saxe, the poet. Boston however, where he frequented the theatre and courted the show folks, could not keep him long in her walls; young Browne was of a roving temperament, and leaving Boston, travelled as a journeyman through the country not staying very long anywhere. In Toledo he was for a while a re

the

porter on the Commercial, where his clever locals attracted much attention. From there he came to the Cleveland Plaindealer whose editor, J. W. Gray, had detected promising genius in his humorous, burlesqued reports of local meetings, races, prize-fights and the like. Sometimes he would have a whole column of fictitious answers from young ladies to a fancied matrimonial advertisement, and then again he would have a column of replies to imaginary general correspondents. Mr. Landon gives the following two specimens in his introduction to the works of Artemus Ward:

"VERITAS. Many make the same error. Mr. Key, who wrote the "Star Spangled Banner," is not the author of Hamlet, a tragedy. He wrote the banner business, and assisted in "The Female Pirate," but did not write Hamlet. Hamlet was written by a talented but unscrupulous man named Macbeth, afterwards tried and executed for "murdering sleep."

"YOUNG CLERGYMAN.-Two pints of rum, two quarts of hot water, teacup of sugar, and a lemon; grate in nutmeg, stir thoroughly and drink while hot."

His fame began to spread. His funny remarks were quoted by the papers all over the country, and retold by comedians on the stage. He left Cleveland at the end of 1860, and went to New York, where he became editor of the humorous paper Vanity Fair, succeeding Charles G. Leland. The paper did not live long, and then it was that

Browne resolved to carry out his long cherished idea of becoming a public speaker. He tried the experiment first at Norwich, Conn., and had an enormous success. Then he appeared in New York at Clinton Hall, the site of the old Astor Place Opera House, where now stands the Mercantile Library. Shortly after wards he published his first book, a collection of funny speeches, letters and oddities, which was hailed with enthusiasm and rounded him a nice little sum. In 1863 he received a telegram from the manager of the San Francisco Opera House, asking "what he would take for forty nights in California." He wired back: "Brandy and Water. A. WARD." The California papers got hold of it and repeated it as a capital joke, thus making an excellent advance notice for him. His lectures in California were an enormous success. On his way back to the east he passed through Salt Lake City and there conceived the idea for his famous lecture on "The Mormons," which he afterwards delivered in the east. The admission ticket to this lecture bore the words:

Admit the Bearer
and one wife.
Yours trooly,
A. Ward.

In 1866 Browne went to London.

His reception there was the most flattering imaginable. Before he began to appear in public as a speaker, he wrote, at the request of Mark Lemon, several contributions to Punch which created a furore. Not since the publication of Thackeray's "Yellow Plush Papers" had anything made such a sensation as his letters. When he finally made his appearance at the Egyptian Hall, the attendance was so large that thousands had to be turned away. But alas! his triumphant career as a humorist came to a sudden end. He was taken ill the seventh week of his engagement. He went to the Isle of Jersey, but did not recover. Desirous of returning to his own country, he started on his home trip, but could not travel any further than Southampton. There he died on the 6th of March, 1867.

Browne was one of the few men, who never made an enemy. He was loved by all who knew him. His humor was never offensive, but always good natured. There was doubtless much of the peculiar charm, which was the secret of his success, in his jovial personality, in the manner in which he made his dry remarks; still there is so much. genuine, broad humor preserved in his writings, that it is no wonder that they are even to-day refreshingly amusing and appealing to all who have any sense of humor.