C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
High-Handed Outrage at Utica
By Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) (1834–1867)
I
The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press was loud in her prases.
1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and Snaiks in my usual flowry stile, what was my skorn & disgust to see a big burly feller walk up to the cage containin my wax figgers of the Lord’s Last Supper, and cease Judas Iscariot by the feet and drag him out on the ground. He then commenced fur to pound him as hard as he cood.
“What under the son are you abowt?” cried I.
Sez he, “What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss here fur?” & he hit the wax figger another tremenjus blow on the hed.
Sez I, “You egrejus ass that air’s a wax figger—a representashun of the false ’Postle.”
Sez he, “That’s all very well fur you to say, but I tell you, old man, that Judas Iscariot can’t show hisself in Utiky with impunerty by a darn site!” with which observashun he kaved in Judassis hed. The young man belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in Utiky. I sood him and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson in the 3d degree.