audience his amusing story of the Conversion of a Negro, which he
subsequently worked up into an article in the Savage Club Papers,
and entitled "Converting the Nigger." Never once again in the
course of the lecture did he refer to Africa, until the time having
arrived for him to conclude, and the people being fairly worn out
with laughter, he finished up by saying, "Africa, ladies and
gentlemen, is my subject. You wish me to tell you something about
Africa. Africa is on the map--it is on all the maps of Africa that
I have ever seen. You may buy a good map for a dollar, and if you
study it well, you will know more about Africa than I do. It is a
comprehensive subject, too vast, I assure you, for me to enter upon
to-night. You would not wish me to, I feel that--I feel it deeply,
and I am very sensitive. If you go home and go to bed it will be
better for you than to go with me to Africa."

The joke about the "neg-rose" has since run the gauntlet of nearly
all the minstrel bands throughout England and America. All the
"bones," every "middle-man," and all "end-men" of the burnt-cork
profession have used Artemus Ward as a mine wherein to dig for the
ore which provokes laughter. He has been the "cause of wit in
others," and the bread-winner for many dozens of black-face
songsters--"singists" as he used to term them. He was just as fond
of visiting their entertainments as they were of appropriating his
jokes; and among his best friends in New York were the brothers
Messrs Neil and Dan Bryant, who have made a fortune by what has been
facetiously termed "the burnt-cork opera."

It was in his "Sixty Minutes in Africa" lecture that Artemus Ward
first introduced his celebrated satire on the negro, which he
subsequently put into print. "The African," said he, "may be our