Complete Works of Artemus Ward Part 4, To California and Return

In the 1850s, Charles Farrar Browne invented a voice that would influence Mark Twain himself: a gloriously illiterate New England rube who comments on American life with fool's wisdom and razor-sharp satire. Artemus Ward travels to California and back, cataloging the absurdities of Gold Rush fever, the pretensions of the wealthy, and the peculiar customs of a nation hurtling toward modernity. The humor lands through the gap between what the narrator says and what he reveals he understands. Browne's character was so beloved that Abraham Lincoln read one of his pieces to his cabinet before discussing the Emancipation Proclamation. This is American satire at its most essential: a country laughing at itself through the eyes of someone officially too simple to be dangerous. The comedy still works because human nature hasn't changed. We're still the same ridiculous creatures Ward skewered, still falling for the same cons, still too serious about foolish things.