The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 2: War

A collection of comic sketches and satirical monologues that lampoon wartime manners and popular politics through humorous lectures, mock letters, and travel anecdotes. The narrator recounts confiscated shows, small‑town war fever, draft meetings, patriotic orations, and military pageantry while offering absurd observations on Southern and Canadian scenes, public officials, and civic ceremonials. Interspersed are parody dispatches, stage anecdotes, and pointed jabs at political rhetoric, all delivered in a deliberately folksy voice that relies on malapropism, exaggeration, and theatrical self‑promotion.