第13章 PUBLISHERS' PREFACE TO THE NEW (1898) EDITION(13)

Africa produces blacks--ivory blacks--they get ivory.It also produces deserts, and that is the reason it is so much deserted by travellers.Africa is famed for its roses.It has the red rose, the white rose, and the neg-rose.Apropos of negroes, let me tell you a little story."Then he at once diverged from the subject of Africa to retail to his 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 brother.Several highly respectable gentlemen and some talented females tell me that he is, and for argument's sake I might be induced to grant it, though I don't believe it myself.But the African isn't our sister, and wife, and uncle.He isn't several of our brothers and first wife's relations.He isn't our grandfather and great grandfather, and our aunt in the country.Scarcely."It may easily be imagined how popular this joke became when it is remembered that it was first perpetrated at a time when the negro question was so much debated as to have become an absolute nuisance.

Nothing else was talked of; nobody would talk of anything but the negro.The saying arose that all Americans had "nigger-on the-brain." The topic had become nauseous, especially to the Democratic party; and Artemus always had more friends among them than among the Republicans.If he had any politics at all he was certainly a Democrat.

War had arisen, the South was closed, and the lecturing arena considerably lessened.Artemus Ward determined to go to California.

Before starting for that side of the American continent, he wished to appear in the city of New York.He engaged, through his friend Mr.De Walden, the large hall then known as Niblo's, in front of the Niblo's Garden Theatre, and now used, I believe, as the dining-room of the Metropolitan Hotel.At that period Pepper's Ghost chanced to be the great novelty of New York City, and Artemus Ward was casting about for a novel title to his old lecture.Whether he or Mr.De Walden selected that of "Artemus Ward's Struggle with a Ghost" I do not know; but I think that it was Mr.De Walden's choice.The title was seasonable, and the lecture successful.Then came the tour to California, whither I proceeded in advance to warn the miners on the Yuba, the travellers on the Rio Sacramento, and the citizens of the Chrysopolis of the Pacific that "A.Ward" would be there shortly.

In California the lecture was advertised under its old name of "The Babes in the Wood." Platt's Hall was selected for the scene of operation, and, so popular was the lecturer, that on the first night we took at the doors more than sixteen hundred dollars in gold.The crowd proved too great to take money in the ordinary manner, and hats were used for people to throw their dollars in.One hat broke through at the crown.I doubt if we ever knew to a dollar how many dollars it once contained.

California was duly travelled over, and "The Babes in the Wood"listened to with laughter in its flourishing cities, its mining-camps among the mountains, and its "new placers beside gold-bedded rivers.While journeying through that strangely-beautiful land, the serious question arose--What was to be done next? After California--where?

Before leaving New York, it had been a favourite scheme of Artemus Ward not to return from California to the East by way of Panama, but to come home across the Plains, and to visit Salt Lake City by the way.The difficulty that now presented itself was, that winter was close upon us, and that it was no pleasant thing to cross the Sierra Nevada and scale the Rocky Mountains with the thermometer far below freezingpoint.Nor was poor Artemus even at that time a strong man.

My advice was to return to Panama, visit the West India Islands, and come back to California in the spring, lecture again in San Francisco, and then go on to the land of the Mormons.Artemus doubted the feasibility of this plan, and the decision was ultimately arrived at to try the journey to Salt Lake.