To many persons it seemed incongruous that there should be any thought, motive, or taste in common between Abraham Lincoln and the droll Artemus Ward. Indeed, the great biographers of Lincoln have either ignored the existence of Ward or have referred to him very sparingly. Yet no visitor at the White House seemed more welcome than Ward during Lincoln’s administration. Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, and Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, were said to disapprove of Ward’s frequent visits, and it was whispered to Mrs. Ames, correspondent of the Independent, that Lincoln hinted to Ward that it might be best to time his visits so as to occur when Mrs. Lincoln was not at home. But it was a matter of common gossip in “Newspaper Row” that there was a strong and true friendship between the care-burdened President and the fun-making showman, whose real name was Charles Farrar Browne.

The strange contrast in their abilities, their dispositions, and their careers puzzled the amateur psychoanalysts of that day. Was it merely an example of the attraction of opposites? Lincoln was strong, athletic, and enduring; Ward was weak, lazy, and changeable. Lincoln loved work; Ward took the path of least resistance. Lincoln was a moderate eater and lived firmly up to his principles as a teetotaler; Ward drank anything sold at a bar and sometimes was too intoxicated to appear at his “wax-figger show.” Lincoln loved the classics and was a good judge of literature; Ward seldom read a classic translation. Lincoln saved money and could carefully invest it; Ward would not take the trouble to collect his own salary, and never was known to make an investment. Lincoln laughed often, and on rare occasions laughed long and loud; Ward never laughed in public and in his funniest moods never even smiled. Lincoln’s sad face, when in repose, touched a chord of sympathy in the souls of those who knew him best. Yet Hingston, who was Ward’s best friend, said that Ward’s cold stare awoke at once cyclones of riotous laughter in his audiences. Lincoln was a great patriotic leader of men and wielded the power of a monarch; Ward was a quiet citizen, who loved his country, but had no desire for power or for battles. Strong contrasts these. Yet in a deep and sincere friendship they were agreed.

Of the few cheerful things which entered Lincoln’s life in those troubled and gloomy times, the one which he enjoyed most was Ward’s “Show.” He thought this was the most downright comical thing that had ever been put before the public, and he laughed heartily even as he described it. Ward had a nondescript collection of stuffed animals which he exhibited upon the stage; he told the audience he found it cheaper to stuff the animals once than to keep stuffing them continually. They consisted at one time of a jack-rabbit and two mangy bears. He had also a picture of the Western plains—the poorest one he could find. He would say, “The Indians in this picture have not come along yet.”

One always expected him to lecture about his animals, but he never did; in fact, he scarcely mentioned them. His manner was that of an utter idiot, and his blank stare, when the audience laughed at something he had said, was enough in itself to send the whole hall into paroxysms of mirth. Lincoln said to me that day, “One glimpse of Ward would make a culprit laugh when he was being hung.”

No doubt one reason why Lincoln felt kindly toward Ward was because the latter was “most unselfishly trying to keep people cheerful in a most depressing time. He and Nasby,” the President said, “are furnishing about all the cheerfulness we now have in this country.” (Petroleum V. Nasby, it will be remembered, was the pen name taken by David Ross Locke in his witty letters from the “Confedrit Crossroads.”)

The humor of Ward may seem crude to us now, but in the dark days of ’64 it took something more potent than refined wit to make people laugh—just as it took a series of ludicrous and not overrefined drawings to make England laugh in 1916; and it must be borne in mind that while Ward’s sayings were homely and sometimes savored strongly of the frontier, they were never coarse or insinuating.

But after all, the best way to learn what Lincoln really thought of Ward was to ask him, and I did exactly that. Also, I was careful to give close heed to his words, that I might be able to write them down immediately afterward. This, to the best of my recollection, was what Lincoln said:

“I was told the other day by a Congressman from Maine that Ward was driven partly insane in his early life by the drowning of his intended bride in Norway Lake. I could feel that in Ward’s character somehow before I was told about it. Ward seems at times so utterly forlorn.

“Nothing draws on my feelings like such a calamity. I knew what it was once. Yes! Yes! I know all about it. One never gets away from it. I must ask Ward to tell me all about his trouble sometime. I think that is what makes him so sad in appearances. Ward never laughs himself, unless he thinks it is his duty to make other people laugh. He is surely right about that.

“Perhaps Ward’s whisky drinking is all an attempt to drown his sorrow. Who knows? It is a mighty mistake to go to drink for comfort. I should suppose the memory of the woman, if she was one worth while, would keep him from such a foolish habit. I’ve been right glad that I let the stuff alone. There was plenty of it about.“Ward told me one day that he took to funny work as a makeshift for a decent living; and that he found it to be an honest way to go about doing good. I would have done that myself if I had not found harder work at the law.

“I have agreed with many people who think that Ward should be in some trade or writing books. But I don’t know about it. He has a special kind of mind, and, rightly used, he would make an excellent teacher of mental science. In one way of looking at it his life is wasted. But if he refreshes and cheers other people as he does me, I can’t see how he could make a better investment of his life. I smile and smile here as one by one the crowd passes me to shake hands, until it is a week before my face gets straight. But it is a duty. I could defeat our whole army to-morrow by looking glum at a reception or by refusing to smile for three consecutive hours.[2] Ward says he carries a bottle of sunshine in ‘the other pocket,’ to treat his friends. I like that idea.

“Ward is dreadfully misunderstood by a lot of dull people. They insist on taking him seriously. An old lady in Baltimore held me up one night after I had told some of Artemus Ward’s remarks, and she may not have forgiven me yet. I told his tale of the rich land out in Iowa, where the farmer threw a cucumber seed as far as he could and started out on a run for his house. But the cucumber vine overtook him and he found a seed cucumber in his pocket.

“At that the old lady opened her eyes and mouth, but made no remark. Once more I tried her, by telling how Ward knew a lady who went for a porous plaster and the druggist told her to place it anywhere on her trunk. Not having a trunk or box in the house, she put it on her bandbox, and the next day reported that it was so powerful that it drew her pink bonnet all out of shape.“That was more than the conscientious old saint could stand, and after supper she called me aside and told me that I ought to know that man Ward, or whoever it was, ‘was an out-and-out liar.’

“That makes me think of a colored preacher who worked here on the grounds through the week, and who loved the deep waters of theology in which he floundered daily. One evening I asked him why he did not laugh on Sunday, and when he said it was because it was ‘suthin’ frivlus,’ I told him that the Bible said God laughed.

“The old man came to the door several days after that and said, ‘Marse Linkum, I’ve been totin’ dat yar Bible saying “God larfed,” and I’ve ’cluded dat it mus’ jes’ tak’ a joke as big as der universe ter mak God larf. Dar ain’t no sech jokes roun’ dis yere White House on Sunday.’

“Well, let us get back to Ward and begin de novo. And, by the way, that was the first Latin phrase I ever heard. But I like Ward, because all his fun and all his yarns are as clean as spring water. He doesn’t insinuate or suggest approval of evil. He doesn’t ridicule true religion. He never speaks slightingly or grossly of woman. He is a one-hundred-carat man in his motives. I am often accredited with telling disgraceful barroom stories, and sometimes see them in print, but I have no time to contradict them. Perhaps people forget them soon. I hope so. I don’t know how I came by the name of a storyteller. It is not a fame I would seek. But I have tried to use as many as I could find that were good so as to cheer up people in this hard world.

“Ward said that he did not know much about education in the schools, but he had an idea the training there was more to make the child think quickly and think accurately than to memorize facts. If that were the case he thought a textbook on bright jokes would be a valuable addition to a school curriculum.“Ward’s sharp jokes do discipline the mind. Ward told Tad last summer that Adam was snaked out of Eden, and that Goliath was surprised when David hit him because such a thing never entered his head before. Ward told Mr. Chase that his father was an artist who was true to life, for he made a scarecrow so bad that the crows brought back the corn they had stolen two years before. Ward believes that the riddles of Sampson, the fables of Æsop, the questions of Socrates, and sums in mathematics are all mind awakeners similar in effect to the discipline of real humor.”

Knowing that Lincoln had suffered a nearly fatal heart blow in his youth through the tragic death of his first love, I was interested, years after this interview with the President, to learn that there had been a startling occurrence of a very similar nature in the early life of Ward. This has been almost universally overlooked. Even his most intimate friends, including Robertson, Hingston, Setchell, Coe, Carleton, and Rider, make no mention of the tragic death of one of Ward’s earliest girl friends, Maude Myrick, then residing with relatives in Norway, Maine. The township of Norway adjoins Waterford, where Ward was born, and where he lived until he was nineteen. None of Ward’s biographers give details of his early life on the farm, and none appear even to have heard of Maude Myrick.

In 1874 a reporter of the Boston Daily Traveler was sent to Waterford to find the living neighbors of Ward’s family and write a sketch of the village and people. In the report the barest mention was made of Maude Myrick. It stated that a cousin of Ward’s remembered that his early infatuation for a girl in the adjoining township “broke him all up” when she was accidentally drowned at the inlet of Norway Lake. Search for her genealogy at this late date seems vain. Ward appears never to have mentioned her name but once after her death, and that was on his own dying bed. The only allusion possibly concerning her that he ever made was a brief note in an autograph album, preserved in Portland, Maine, in which he wrote: “As for opposites; the happiest place for me is Tiffin, and the saddest is a bridge over the Norway brook.”

If the historian could be sure that the vague rumor was fact and that the country lass and the farmer’s son were lovers, that the place of her sudden death at the bridge over the inlet to Norway Lake, halfway between their homes, was their trysting place, it would make clear the chief reason for Abraham Lincoln’s tender interest in Artemus Ward. That fact would also account in a large degree for Ward’s eccentric, inimitable humor. All the great humorists from Charles Lamb to Josh Billings were broken-hearted in their youth. Great geniuses have often been developed by the same sad experience. It often costs much to be truly great.Previous to his sixteenth year the life of Charles Farrar Browne was that of a New England country boy with parents who were industrious, honest, and poor. The family needs were not of the extreme kind which are found in the slums of the city, but existence depended on incessant toil and the most critical economy. Squire Browne, the father of the future “Artemus Ward,” was a farmer who could also use surveying instruments with the skill of New England common sense.

His mother was a strong, industrious woman of the Pilgrim Fathers stock. She encouraged home study and made the long winter evenings the occasion for moral and mental instruction. The district school was of little use to her children, as they could “outteach the teacher.” But Charlie was educated beyond his years by the books which his parents brought into the home. At fifteen years of age, his father having died two years previously, he was sent to Skowhegan, Maine, to learn the trade of a printer in the office of the Skowhegan Clarion.

His parents had not intended that he should be permanently a printer; the inability to care for the growing boy at home evidently induced them to seek a trade for him by which he could earn a living while studying for the ministry. But the tragic events or the unaccountable mental revolution of those unrecorded years turned away all the hopes of his parents and sent his soul into rebellion against such a career. Nevertheless, a deep good nature remained intact and the altruistic qualities of his disposition proved to be permanent. He wrote to Shillabar (“Mrs. Partington”) of Boston that “the man who has no care for fun himself has more time to cheer up his neighbors.” The only thing that ever cheered Ward into chuckling laughter was to meditate by himself on the effect of a squib or description he was composing on “some old codger on a barrel by the country grocery.”Ward was never contented or fully happy. He traveled about from place to place, often leaving without collecting his wages. He was a typesetter and reporter at Tiffin, Ohio, at Toledo, and at Cleveland. When Mr. J. W. Gray of the Cleveland Plain Dealer secured Ward’s services as a reporter, Ward was twenty-four years old and thought to be hopelessly indolent by his previous employer. He soon became known as “that fool who writes for the Plain Dealer”; and his comic situations and surprising arguments were soon the general theme of conversation in the city. He was famous in a month.

It was there and then that he assumed the pen name of Artemus Ward. He began to give his humorous public talks in 1862 and was successful from the first evening. His writings for Vanity Fair, New York, and all his lectures were clearly original. He could never be accused of plagiarism or imitation. Indeed, no one on earth could repeat his lectures with success or equal Ward in continual fun making. He often assumed the role of an idiot, but at the same time made the wisest observations and the cutest sarcasms. His appearance on the stage even before he made his mechanical nod was greeted with loud, hearty, and prolonged laughter. The saddest forgot his sorrow, the most sedate gentleman began to shake, and the crusty old maid broke out into the Ha! Ha! of a girl of sixteen.

We may read Ward’s writings and feel something of his absurd humor when we recall his posture as he stated solemnly that his wife’s feet “were so large that her toes came around the corner two minutes before she came along”; but to feel the full force of the absurdity one needs to see Ward’s seeming impatience that anyone should take it as a joke or disbelieve his plain statement.

Some cynical persons saw in Lincoln’s friendship a move to secure Ward’s influence as a popular writer for the help of his political party. Now that Mr. Lincoln is more fully understood, no one would accuse him of any such a hypocritical or unworthy motive. He would have been frank with Ward even though the latter was needed to aid the sacred cause of human liberty.

Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican, writing on Artemus Ward’s death in 1866, said, “Ward is said not to have seen a well day after the death of President Lincoln.” It was a true friendship, beyond a doubt.