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18 THE ATLANTJAM S A V Systematic Savings will elevate a person and change him from a creature of circumstance to a position in so ciety with the respect of his fellows. This bank makes a specialty of savings accounts, which may be started with as little as one dollar. We pay in terest at the rate of 4 per cent, per annum, compounded semi-annually. Any amount deposited before the 10th of the month will draw interest from the first of that month. Start an account with the “Travelers” at once and ex perience that feeling of self respect and confidence which comes from being independent. Travelers Bank 6 Trust Company (THE BANK OF COURTESY) 56 PEACHTREE STREET ARTEMUS WARD, HIS QUEER WAYS AND DROLL SAYINGS. From the Hartford Courant. American humor stand unique and supreme the world over. Our coun try may have no recognized standing in creative art; American drama may be in its infancy; American painting and sculpture may be in the academic stage; but there is no doubt about the American humor. It stands alone— peerless, distinctive, the recognized superior of all other brands. Perhaps that is why the American humorist is sure of a niche in the hall of fame, and his name is Bure to live long in the hearts and minds of those who have basked in the sunshine of his genial outpourings. Although his career in the public eye was measured by a span of less than ten years, the name of ArtemuB Ward today,after forty years, is writ ten among the first in the history of American humor. The plain, homely character of his humor, its almost end less flow, its ready outpouring on ev ery occasion, its harmlessness, and its contagious communicability, all these attributes helped win its author fame, and made his name live long after he went down to an early grave. Indeed his genial personality from which his humor sprang, Is remembered, per haps, better than what he wrote. his real name—was any saint, simply because he possessed a rich vein of smooth-flowing humor. He was no toriously shiftless in business matters, somewhat coarse-grained at times in his humor as he was coarse in his speech, and in his habits of living. But he is not remembered for these. It is the best that lives after him, fortunately, and not the worst, and he The Good That Lives. It must not be supposed that Ward j -or Charles F. Browne, which was Atlanta National Bank Building. I N GS. will be known for his genial and hu morous personality—not for bis weak ness. He was a down-east Yankee, was Ward; born in 1834 and raised in the village of Waterford, Me. His first experience as a writer came when he attached himself to the Oxford County Advertiser at Norway, Me., as a prin ter, and later as compositor on the Carpet Bag, a humorous Journal pub lished in Boston, he began to find him self. Perhaps as humorous a trick as he ever turned came in the very springtime of his work as a printer. The Advertiser force had grown dis gusted and nettled at the boasting of an opposition paper, which chronicled from week to week insignificant im provements in the appearance of the office, such as a new bay window, a fresh coat of pain for the casement, etc. At last Artemus wrote and the Advertiser published the following: “We have bored a new hole in the sink and put a bran new slop-pail un der it. What will the hell-hounds of the other office say to that?" As a matter of fact the "hell-hounds" didn’t say a word. They were the laughing stock of Oxford county. On The Carpet Bag. His first work of importance Arte mus did on the Carpet Bag, in Boston, whither he wandered from Maine. But he was of roving disposition, and the "wanderlust” took him westward. He landed in Cincinnati, worked on this paper and that, and one day, reading an advertisement for .a school teacher wanted in a Kentucky village not far away, he responded. Now Artemus was never a strong man, being very “skinny” as they say down east, and not given to exhibitions of physical prowess. Before the first week was over he learned that a gang of rough youngsters had licked every school master that ever tried to hold down the school Friday night Artemus dis appeared and never returned. He didn’t even stop to ask for that week’s salary, which he must have needed sorely.' By easy stages he worked bis way up along the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad to Dayton, thence to Springfield, to Tiffin, and then to To ledo, where he was market reporter on the Commercial. Here his work as a writer really commenced, and his merit was recognized when he was called to be city editor of the Cleve land Plain Dealer at the princely sala ry of $10 per week. They paid won derful salaries in those days. Hartford Man Knew Him. It was his work on the Plain Dealer that brought him into contact with Charles E. Wilson, now a resident of Hartford, who remembers well the long, lanky, good-natured, shiftless, coarse-grained Maine farmer, and who today recalls vividly the details of the young man’s work and life at that time. During the late fifties and early sixties, when Artemus Ward was with the Plain Dealer, Mr. Wilson was bus iness manager of the paper. James F. Ryder, a well-known Cleveland photo grapher, became one of Ward’s warm est friends, and in his record of half a century of photography, under the title “Voigtlaender and I” (Voigtlaen- der being his camera), he devotes a whole chapter to the humorist “Artemus soon had a city full of friends,” says Mr. Ryder. “His humor was like a bubbling spring, always on tap; a merry laugh was always ready and easily called out.” Wanderlust Had Him. His reputation as a humorist was made during his few years in Cleve land, and also through contributions to Vanity Fair, a New York publica tion. He was called to an editorial position on this part in 1860 at a sal ary twice that paid him by the Plain Dealer, and of course he accepted. He had much leisure time in New York, and devoted it to the preparation of his first and most famous lecture. “Babies in the Woods,” which had nothing to do with babes at all. The “wanderlust” had him, and he looked forward for years to the lecture field before he actually embarked upon it. At last, however, he "got going,” and his reputation grew through the Mid dle West, where he achieved his great est success. His return to Cleveland was the occasion for an ovation. It is related of his appearance there that an old Cleveland friend, Charley Park, sat right down in the very front row. Charley was as well known as Arte mus and he amused himself and play ed a disconcerting practical joke on Artemus by grimacing and making quiet comments to distract the lectur- si.. At last Artemus told the story of ■» tat and lazy fellow who, on a certain hot day, was possessed of an inordi nate thirst, but his disclination to walk five rods to a cool refreshing spring induced him to turn to a tea kettle on a hot stove hand by, pour out its contents and then blow upon the Fourth National Bank Building.