visitors to the Egyptian Hall when "Artemus" stepped upon the
platform. At first they thought that he was a gentleman who
appeared to apologise for the absence of the showman. They had
pictured to themselves a coarse old man, with a damp eye and a
puckered mouth, one eyebrow elevated an inch above the other to
express shrewdness and knowledge of the world--a man clad in
velveteen and braid, with a heavy watch-chain, large rings, and
horny hands, the touter to a waxwork show, with a hoarse voice, and
over familiar manner. The slim gentleman in evening dress, polished
manners, and gentle voice, with a tone of good breeding that hovered
between deference and jocosity; the owner of those thin--those much
too thin--white hands could not be the man who spelt joke with a
"g." Folks who came to laugh, began to fear that they should remain
to be instructed, until the gentlemanly disappointer began to speak,
then they recovered their real "Artemus," Betsy Jane, wax-figgers,
and all. Will patriotic Americans forgive me if I say that Charles
Browne loved England dearly! He had been in London but a few days
when he paid a visit to the Tower. He knew English history better
than most Englishmen; and the Tower of London was to him the history
of England embalmed in stone and mortar. No man had more reverence
in his nature; and at the Tower he saw that what he had read was
real. There were the beef-eaters; there had been Queen Elizabeth
and Sir Walter Raleigh, and Lady Jane Grey, and Shakspere's murdered
princes, and their brave, cruel uncle. There was the block and the
axe, and the armour and the jewels. "St George for Merrie England!"
had been shouted in the Holy Land, and men of the same blood as
himself had been led against the infidel by men of the same brain
and muscle as George Washington. Robin Hood was a reality, and not
a schoolboy's myth like Ali Baba and Valentine and Orson.