"This, mind you," he used to say, "is in very hard cash, an article altogether superior to that of my friend Charles Reade." [Illustration: Artemas Ward] His idea was to set aside out of his earnings enough to make him independent, and then to give up "this mountebank business," as he called it.

He had a great respect for scholarly culture and personal respectability, and thought that if he could get time and health he might do something "in the genteel comedy line." He had a humorous novel in view, and a series of more aspiring comic essays than any he had attempted.
Often he alluded to the opening for an American magazine, "not quite so highfalutin as the Atlantic nor so popular as Harper's." His mind was beginning to soar above the showman and merrymaker.

His manners had always been captivating.

Except for the nervous worry of ill-health, he was the kind-hearted, unaffected Artemus of old, loving as a girl and liberal as a prince.

He once showed me his daybook in which were noted down over five hundred dollars lent out in small sums to indigent Americans.
"Why," said I, "you will never get half of it back." "Of course not," he said, "but do you think I can afford to have a lot of loose fellows black-guarding me at home because I wouldn't let them have a sovereign or so over here ?" There was no lack of independence, however, about him.