December 24 and 25 Friday – Christmas – Artemus Ward hung around the Enterprise office during his stay in town. Sam and Dan De Quille showed Ward around during his visit. Joe Goodman described the raucous evening that unfolded at Chaumond’s after Ward’s lecture at Silver City, where Ward proposed his well-known toast, “ I give you Upper Canada.” Why? “Because I don’t want it myself” [Fatout, MT in VC 128]:
About midnight, as usual, he [Ward] turned up in the Enterprise office and commanded the editorial slaves to have done with their work, as his royal highness proposed to treat them to an oyster supper… Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, Dan de Quille, Denis McCarthy, [Edward P.] Hingston [Ward’s manager]. and myself sat about the table ….Then begun a flow and reflow of humor it would be presumptuous in me to attempt to even outline. It was on that occasion that Mark Twain fully demonstrated his right to rank above the world’s acknowledged foremost humorist…Course succeeded course and wine followed wine, until day began to break. …The first streaks of dawn were brightening the east when we went into the streets. “I can’t walk on the earth,” said Artemus. “I feel like walking on the skies, but as I can’t I’ll walk on the roofs.” And he clambered up a shed to the tops of the one-story houses, with Mark Twain after him, and commenced a wild scramble from roof to roof. The piece ends with Ward spooning mustard to Sam, astride a barrel on the porch of Fred Getzler’s saloon. It was Christmas day, Dec. 25 Friday [MTL 1: 269-270n5]. Ward then gave a second lecture in the evening [Powers, MT A Life 132].