sanity. Like Talleyrand, he was of opinion that "Qui vit sans jolie
n'est pas si sage qu'il croit."

Artemus Ward's first lecture was entitled "The Babes in the Wood."
I asked him why he chose that title, because there was nothing
whatever in the lecture relevant to the subject of the child-book
legend. He replied, "It seemed to sound the best. I once thought
of calling the lecture 'My Seven Grandmothers.' Don't you think
that would have been good?" It would at any rate have been just as
pertinent.

Incongruity as an element of fun was always an idea uppermost in the
mind of the Western humorist. I am not aware that the notes of any
of his lectures, except those of his Mormon experience, have been
preserved, and I have some doubts if any one of his lectures, except
the Mormon one, was ever fairly written out. "The Babes in the
Wood," as a lecture, was a pure and unmitigated "sell." It was
merely joke after joke, and drollery succeeding to drollery, without
any connecting thread whatever. It was an exhibition of fireworks,
owing half its brilliancy and more than half its effect to the skill
of the man who grouped the fireworks together and let them off. In
the hands of any other pyrotechnist the squibs would have failed to
light, the rockets would have refused to ascend, and the
"nine-bangers" would have exploded but once or twice only, instead
of nine times. The artist of the display being no more, and the
fireworks themselves having gone out, it is perhaps not to be
regretted that the cases of the squibs and the tubes of the rockets
have not been carefully kept. Most of the good things introduced by
Artemus Ward in his first lecture were afterwards incorporated by
him in subsequent writings, or used over again in his later