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if there's a mortgage on it,' she declared.

"He used to carry a good deal of money about with him, and he spent it freely. Being lionized as he was, he had to live up to his reputation. He owned considerable jewelry. For one thing there was a very beautiful gold chain which had been given him by the miners in California. It was so heavy that he said he only wore it in the afternoon. That was his funny way of speaking."

Another contemporary of Artemus Ward's whom I met was a stooping, elderly village man who walked with a cane. I called at his house in the evening, and I called early because I had been told that he "went to bed Iwith the chickens." We sat in his kitchen in the gradually increasing dusk of the twilight.

"Yes, I knew Charles Brown," he said, "and I helped lower him into the ground. His body was brought here about the beginning of summer from England in a metallic casket all sealed and soldered up. The casket was cut open at his mother's request, and we see it was Charles inside. There was a funeral at the house, attended by a few of the neighbors, and then we went to the cemetery at South Waterford. We didn't have a hearse, but used a two-seated spring wagon, as was the custom here. By taking out the seats room was made for the box, and the driver would sit up on that. The others went in their own teams.

"When Charles was here on his summer visits he didn't do nothin' except have a good time. He was a lazy critter, and he would lay around on the grass or go to ride or do anything he see fit. It was a kind of a restful vacation, I should call it, but after he went into the show business I guess he may have worked some getting ready for the winter campaign. He was a bright, witty feller-no mistake about that. He had a vein of wit that all the Browns had. Cyrus, his brother, he was pretty cute, too.

"To go from here back to New York Charles would drive 11 miles to the

railroad and go by train down to Portland, where he'd take the boat for Boston. Once he was going on board the boat after he'd been having a little too festive a time, and he ran down the gangplank and across the deck and threw up over the rail. When he'd relieved himself he said to the feller who was with him, 'It always makes me sick to be on shipboard.'

"Another time he went on to the boat in the evening, just before the time for it to start. He'd been eating heartily and celebrating some with his friends, and he went right to bed in his stateroom. The next morning a man who was traveling with him asked him how he'd slept.

"Not very well,' he said. 'I'm always sick going around Cape Elizabeth.'

"But the boat hadn't left the dock on account of the weather being rough.

"Charles was a poor, sick feller when he left here to go to England, and he hadn't ought to have made such a trip. That wound him up in the show business.

"We thought he'd have considerable property, and he did will away a good deal, but nobody could find it. Where it had gone to I don't know, but there was roughish fellers in those days as well as now. They'd steal the eyes out of your head if they could.

"The trouble with both Charles and Cyrus was that they drank. Whisky ruined 'em. That was what was the matter with 'em. I tell you, whisky is good in some cases, but I don't believe it helped them fellers any. They'd have lived longer without it.

"You'd better see Mr. Wheeler. He was raised here on the Flat right beside of Charles, and knew him well. He's a feller well booked up, too, and can give some light on this subject."

The next morning I found Mr. Wheeler in his barn getting out some barrels in preparation for apple-picking, and there I interveiwed him. "I ain't any chicken," he said, "and it is a long time since Charles Brown and I were boys together. One thing he used to do was to get up a circus in their barn.

They had an old crumple-horn cow that he'd dress up in great shape in blankets of different colors for an elephant, and he'd tell us the elephant's good qualities. The cow didn't like it, but the rest of us did. The calves and the dogs and cats served for other strange animals. Charles acted as clown, and he made a pretty good one. He had some assistants who were acrobats, or thought they were.

"He was full of his fun, but there was nothing vicious about him. He simply liked to do things that would raise a laugh. At school he was always playing jokes on the rest of the scholars, and was a terrible torment to them. Of course he'd get called down once in a while for his pranks, but the teachers liked him. Every one liked him all through life.

"William Allen sat in the seat right in front of him. William was a good scholar, but kind of a sleepy fellow. He'd sit with his head bowed forward studying. Charles was always dabbling with ink, and one day he took up his ink bottle and poured the contents down the back of William's neck. I saw that performance. The ink ran down on the floor into the cracks under the seats, and when I was in the old school house as much as 25 years later the stains were still there. The building stands yet up here side of the road, but is now a carpenter's shop.

"There were 56 of us in the school the last winter I went. A man taught in winter and a woman in summer. We learned more than the children do now -get more practical information. I won a book once as a prize for spelling, and I've kept it ever since. The 12 or 15 in the class would line up, and if one missed a word and the next one below spelled it right they'd change places. The best speller was at the head of the line most of the time, and the poorest at the foot. We didn't have a janitor, but did the work ourselves. There was a fire list of the boys, and they took turns making the fire; and there was a sweeping list of the girls, and they took turns doing the sweeping. When there was snow we

slid down the steep hill that was close by, and in the warm months we'd play in the brook.

"Charles wasn't out at recess tearing around with the other boys in their rough sports. He was different in his tastes from most of us, though, generally, when any fun was on hand in town he was there early and stayed late. We used to have school exhibitions, and if we acted the incidents in William Tell where the apple was shot off the boy's head, or anything in that line, Charles was sure to be it. He'd play baseball with us on the common, and he'd get up in the middle of the night to shoot off some powder and celebrate the Fourth of July.

"As for work, he didn't take to farming at all. He never hankered after manual labor. In his later life, when he was at home on his vacations, he just loafed around and smoked. didn't get up very early in the morning. Yes, he was quite a fellow to lie abed -at least his mother thought he was.

He

"I went to New York when he was about 25. At that time he was editing a little humorous paper called Vanity Fair. I was there two days, and was with him quite a little. He was a good entertainer. We took in the shipping wharves and the big vessels and Central Park, and went around to the dance halls. One of these halls was a room 60 feet square, with the walls all mirrors. I'd never seen anything like it before, and I haven't since."

The home of the humorist's mother, now called "Wheelbarrow farm," is owned by a woman relative who has this to say of him: "He led a gay life, I think, but though he sometimes drank to excess, he did not have protracted sprees. He was tall, slim, and bony, and he easily assumed on the platform a manner that was awkward and made him appear sort of green looking. But if you met him you found him genial, courteous and charming, and his talk full of witty nonsense. I heard him lecture once, and just before he began my mother and I went around to speak to him. He insisted that we should sit on the stage. What he said

was mostly foreign to his subject. He spoke anything that came into his mind, and he was so absurd that I nearly rolled under my chair. Mother said she never laughed so much in her life."

At the age of 14 the humorist's school days ended, and he left home to make his own way in the world. For a time he worked in the neighboring town of Norway, and thither I followed on his trail. As I entered the town I made some inquiries of a man I met on the street, who responded: "Yes, Artemus was a devil here in a newspaper printing office. He learned the printing trade and contributed to the paper. He was a mischievous cuss, you know, and when he went to school people thought he was a dunce and didn't amount to anything, but when he grew up he played to the crowned heads of Europe.

"There was a rivalry between the paper here and the one in the adjoining town of Paris, and each one always bragged about any improvements it made and crowed over the other one. The Paris paper for one while seemed to be having much the most to crow about, and Artemus wrote this paragraph: 'A large improvement has been made in our office. We have bored a hole in the bottom of our sink and set a slop-pail under it. What will the hell hounds over to Paris think now?"

"He was a funny fellow, Artemus Ward was. Once he was somewhere and got strapped. He found a man he knew, and said: 'If it's not too much out of place, I wish you'd loan me some money.'

"The man was willing and handed over what Artemus said he needed, and then asked him when he would pay it back.

"Well,' Artemus answered, 'I'll be pretty busy on the Resurrection Day. Let's call it the day after.'

"If he was lecturing here in Maine he'd refer to a time when he 'spoke before a refined and intelligent audience in East Stoneham.' The fun of that was that East Stoneham was a jumping off place. It was the end of the road,

and the people there couldn't read or write.

"But the greatest joke he ever perpetrated was the will he made over in England. He called in all the nobility to witness it, and disposed of his property as if he was a millionaire. Really, he didn't have a darn cent."

From a Norway lawyer I got further information. "When I started to practice I opened an office down at Waterford," he said. "I had plenty of time on my hands, for I didn't have much to do except to make out occasional deeds at 50 cents apiece. Once Artemus brought me a boy that he'd picked up somewhere, and he hired me to teach him. He didn't value money, and he'd have given away his last dollar to a friend in need.

"When he was at home he smoked and strolled around and joked with the boys. Every morning along about 10 o'clock, after he'd eaten breakfast, he would get his mail and bring it to my office to read.

"One time he was telling me about his visiting Los Angeles. 'It was nothing but a village,' he said. 'I'd heard. there was a river running through the place, and I wanted to see it 'Twasn't much of a river. I hunted for it quite a while before I found it, and then I was thirsty and drank it up.'

"He was droll not only in what he said, but in his manner. Many of the things he said which people would go into a perfect hurrah over would have attracted no notice if another person had said them. It is claimed that he is the only person who could make every one laugh in an English audience."

What I had heard of Artemus Ward's will made me desirous to see it, and I sought the country courthouse. Artemus died in England on March 6, 1867, and the will is dated February 23d of the same year. It is not the extraordinary document that the popular imagination pictures, and its most interesting portions are these:

"I desire that my body may be buried in Waterford, Me. I give the library of books bequeathed to me by

my late Uncle Calvin Farrar and those that have been added by me to the boy or girl who at an examination to be held between the first day of January and the first day of April immediately succeeding my decease shall be declared to be the best scholar in Waterford Upper Village, such scholar to be a native of that last mentioned place and under the age of 18 years.

"I bequeath the residue of my estate toward forming a fund for the founding of an asylum for worn-out printers in

the United States, and I direct that the same be paid to Mr. Horace Greeley of New York."

Whatever personal property the humorist had in his possession in England at the time he died, mysteriously disappeared, but a few thousand dollars were realized on his house at Yonkers. This went to children who were relatives in his home town. His mother had enough property of her own to supply her own simple wants as long as she lived.

A MOUNTAIN REVERIE

Enlarged my vision as I outward gaze
Far as the eye can see. A greater soul
Seems born within me as I look upon

The wonders wrapped around the Rocky Heights.
This magic veil which hides from me its woof
Needs stronger lens than human retina

To read the message written in the scene.

To merely see and feel the message not
Would be to miss its vibrant wonder-song
That, hushed and trembling with the urge of life
Is breaking from my soul its narrowed bonds.
Here, I am poised on wings of larger thought-
My ears are open to the Whisp'ring Voice-
For God alone in silence comes; in calm, in rest,
In thousand shades of coloring that blend
Into the song of songs-His harmony.

These glory tints are but the finishing,
The after-thought expressions of the soul;
An echo-tone of all creative power.

Enraptured with this artistry which builds
Unseen, unceasing, through unending time,

I lose myself in vastnesses of space

Then feel anew the oneness of the all.

I feel the throbbing melody of life

Vibrating through and through a nameless law-
The same that marks the tide's strong ebb and flow
And causes meteors to flash and fall,

And makes the sun to throw off rays of light-
Makes tiny dew-drops glisten on the grass

And rainbows blend in seven shades

Of seven mysteries, and mother-love-
Another ray reflecting law divine.

Alone in contemplation thus I dream
Nor know nor care the hours are slipping by,
For I am lost; by soul has wandered far.
The upland trail which brings eternal peace
Leads ever out and on tow'rd the Supreme.

E. V. MILLER.

C

The Stubbs Foundation

WHAT SHALL I DO WITH IT?

By Bolton Hall

OUNT it, please," I said to the teller of the Night & Day Bank, as I thrust the mass of crumpled bills into the little window. "Eighty-seven thousand one hundred and one dollars," said he, as he straightened out the yellow ten and twenty thousand dollar notes, while my companion began to snore on the settee.

"Put is to my credit and (here I consulted the letter I had taken from the man's pocket) Shooter Stubbs'-to be drawn on either name," I added.

The cashier stared at me. "Oh, a friend of mine," I explained, "a mining man, you know, got a lump of money and went off on a bat. I picked it up and I want it kept safe."

"Oh, all right, anything you say, Mr. Seton; just give me your signature and

Mr.

"Stumps-Stubbs, I mean," I said; "he'll come in to-morrow and leave you his signature."

While the book was being made out I shook Stubbs into a half conscious condition and then bundled him off in a cab to the Buckingham Hotel, and gave the night watchman charge concerning him.

I thought Stubbs might have been drugged. The fact is, I had just met him in the cafe of the Buckingham, and he told me I was a "good fellasee that in a minit," he said, and gave me the roll. "Got plenty money," he said; "you take that."

"Why, you'll be robbed, man," I said.

"Robbed! Not much." He showed me the handle of a Colt's 45. "They don't rob Shooter Stubbs," he mum

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In the morning the watchman told me a weird tale of how he was alone toward morning when Stubbs came down, fired at a devil he saw in the mirror back of the office (that part was true: it was a good shot) and ran out of the hotel. The night watchman was afraid to follow; besides he was alone in the corridor.

That was the last that ever was heard of Stubbs. Of course I advertised to find him, but though I did. state the amount of the money, a reporter got part of the story, and it was a headliner for a few days.

The letter I took from his pocket was addressed General Delivery, from Coleman C. Briggs, an attorney in Billings, Montana; but inquiry there brought nothing but that Stubbs had given him ten thousand dollars some months before, and directed him to buy a U. P. bond (he gave me the number), and to give ten dollars a week, every Monday, to a young man who would call for it. If he failed to call for it the allowance was to stop, and "D- it, give the bond to the Mormons or to the Devil."

Briggs wrote me he asked him why not leave the bond to the State, but Stubbs got mad and said that would only lighten the taxes for the landowners, whom he hated. I judge he leased his mines.

A trip to Billings made after a year had passed brought no other result than that Shooter's protege was supposed to be an illegitimate son, though

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