engage a circus, a wild-beast show, or a lecturing celebrity.

As a rule Artemus Ward succeeded in pleasing every one in his
audience, especially those who understood the character of the man
and the drift of his lecture; but there were not wanting at any of
his lectures a few obtuse-minded, slowly-perceptive, drowsy-headed
dullards, who had not the remotest idea what the entertainer was
talking about, nor why those around him indulged in laughter.
Artemus was quick to detect these little spots upon the sunny face
of his auditory. He would pick them out, address himself at times
to them especially, and enjoy the bewilderment of his Boeotian
patrons. Sometimes a stolid inhabitant of central New York,
evidently of Dutch extraction, would regard him with an open stare
expressive of a desire to enjoy that which was said if the point of
the joke could by any possibility be indicated to him. At other
times a demure Pennsylvania Quaker would benignly survey the poor
lecturer with a look of benevolent pity; and on one occasion, when
my friend was lecturing at Peoria, an elderly lady, accompanied by
her two daughters, left the room in the midst of the lecture,
exclaiming, as she passed me at the door, "It is too bad of people
to laugh at a poor young man who doesn't know what he is saying, and
ought to be sent to a lunatic asylum!"

The newspaper reporters were invariably puzzled in attempting to
give any correct idea of a lecture by Artemus Ward. No report could
fairly convey an idea of the entertainment; and being fully aware of
this, Artemus would instruct his agent to beg of the papers not to
attempt giving any abstract of that which he said. The following is
the way in which the reporter of the Golden Era, at San Francisco,
California, endeavoured to inform the San Franciscan public of the