American Magazine March 2015

TH A
BY BRAD SCRIBER, CAS/BA ’97
ILLUSTRATIONS BY NATE BEELER, SOC/BA ’02
careers often intertwined, but they never met in
person again.
Browne’s final tour as Ward was to London, where
he was the talk of the town and contributed to the
humor magazine Punch. Browne died there in 1867, and
his body was brought back across the Atlantic, landing
in New York Harbor just as Twain was outbound on his
own trip to Europe.
Twain eulogized Browne as “one of the kindest
and gentlest men in the world” and “America’s
greatest humorist.”
It is unclear if Browne picked his pseudonym in
homage to Artemas Ward, the Revolutionary War general.
That’s one explanation he offered, but he also claimed to
have lifted it from a showman of the same name.
Ward, the general, has no connection to AU. By the
whim of a planning commission, his statue was installed
at the Massachusetts Avenue intersection, and the
campus now brushes against the circumference of the
circle that bears his name. He may stand at the center
to greet campus visitors, but his relation to our alma
mater is—both historically and geometrically—
only tangential.
Nonetheless, AU has embraced General Ward as a
mascot of sorts, adopting his name for the School of
Public Affairs building and the annual Artie Ward Week
celebration. Imagine what might have been if the other
Artemus had been enshrined in that spot.
Perhaps we would be home, instead, to a School
or Public Satire ekalled by few & exceld by none.
FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 13