In the beautiful town of Cleveland, Ohio, ten years ago, I was introduced, one Sunday morning, to Mr. Charles F. Browne, who had recently acquired celebrity by his Artemus Ward letters, in the Cleveland "Plaindealer." He was then twenty-five years of age, of somewhat slender form, but with ruddy cheeks, and a general appearance of health and vigor. He was the local editor of the "Plaindealer," and had the ready, cordial, and off-hand manner of the members of the Western press. Like other professional humorists, he was not particularly funny in ordinary conversation; on the contrary, he was less so than Western editors usually are. I was far from anticipating the career that was in store for him; still less could I have foreseen the premature death of a young man who presented even an exceptional appearance of good health. If he were alive to-day, he would only be thirty-eight years of age.

He was born at Waterford, in Maine, where his father was a surveyor. His native village, as he says in one of his papers," does not contain over forty houses, all told; but they are milk-white, with the greenest of blinds, and, for the most part, are shaded with beautiful elms and willows. To the right of us is a mountain; to the left a lake. The village nestles between. Of course it does. I never read a novel in my life in which the village did not nestle. Villages invariably nestle." In this secluded nook of New England, he passed the first fourteen years of his life, durwhich he acquired such education as a rather idle and sport-loving boy could acquire in the common and high schools.

ing

He was sent to learn the printing business at a neighboring town, called Skowhegan, where, in the office of the Skowhegan "Clarion," he learned to set type and work the hand-press. To the last of his days he held this place in

abhorrence. One of his friends has recorded that he was accustomed to set up a howl of derision" whenever its name was mentioned; and that whenever he desired to express the last degree of contempt for any person, place, or thing, he would speak of it as worthy of Skowhegan. How many a boy has reaped a fell revenge upon a teacher or an employer, by turning out to be a genius, and consigning him to universal ridicule !

At sixteen he found his way to Boston, where he obtained employment as a compositor in the office of the funniest periodical then published in Boston, "The Carpet-bag," to which Shillaber, Halpine, and Saxe contributed. As he set up, from week to week, the humorous contributions of those writers, the conviction grew upon him that he too could write a piece that would make people laugh. I think he must have been reading Franklin's Autobiography or the preface to "Pickwick," for in putting his talent to the test, he employed a device, similar to that used by Franklin and Dickens in offering their first productions to the press. Having written his piece in a disguised hand, he put it into the editor's box. Great was his joy when it was handed to him, soon after, to set in type.

This first piece, I believe, was in the style of Major Jack Downing, whose letters, he once said, had more to do with making him a humorist than the productions of any other writer.

About this time he chanced to read Bayard Taylor's "Views Afoot," in which that popular author gave an account of his making the tour of Europe, and paying his way by working at his trade, which was that of a printer. Captivated by this example, he started for the Great West. When his money was exhausted, he would stop for a while In some large town where there was a printing-office, and

replenish his purse; which done, he would continue his journey.

"I did n't know," he once said, "but what I might get as far as China, and set up a newspaper one day in the tea-chest tongue."

He stopped short of China, however. At the town of Tiffin, Ohio, he obtained a place as compositor and assistant editor, at four dollars a week. From Tiffin he removed to Toledo, where he procured a similar place in the office of the "Toledo Commercial," at five dollars a week. It was upon this paper that his talent as a humorist first attracted attention, and he was soon permitted to devote his whole time to filling the local columns with amusing abuse of the rival paper. He acquired so much celebrity in Ohio as a writer of facetious paragraphs, that he was offered at length the place of local editor of the Cleveland "Plaindealer," at a salary, munificent for the time and place, of twelve dollars a week.

Most of the noted humorists and the great master of humor himself, Charles Dickens - have shown a particular fondness for persons who gain their livelihood by amusing the public, showmen of all kinds and grades, from the tumbler in the circus to the great tragedian of the day. In the performance of his duty as local editor, Charles Browne had abundant opportunity of gratifying this taste, and he gradually became acquainted with most of the travelling showmen of the Western country. He delighted to study their habits, and he used to tell many a good story of their ingenious devices for rousing the enthusiasm of the public. Much of this showman's lore he turned to account in the Letters of Artemus Ward.

-

There are dull times in a place like Cleveland, — times when the local editor is hard put to it to fill his columns.

No show, no court, no accident, no police report, no trotting match, no fashionable wedding, no surprise party, no anything. One day in 1859, when the local editor of the Cleveland" Plaindealer" was in desperate want of a topic, he dashed upon paper a letter from an imaginary showman, to which he affixed the name of a Revolutionary General, which had always struck him as being odd," Artemas Ward." The letter began thus:

a amoozin

"To the Editor of the Plaindealer- SIR: I'm moving alongslowly along - down tords your place. I want you should write me a letter, sayin hows the show-bizniss in your place. My show at present consists of three moral Bares, a Kangaroo little Raskal; 'twould make you larf to deth to see the little cuss jump up and squeal-wax figgers of G. Washington, Gen. Taylor, John Bunyan, Dr. Kidd, and Dr. Webster in the act of killin' Dr. Parkman, besides several miscellanyus moral wax stattoots of celebrated piruts and murderers, etc., ekalled by few and exceld by none."

The showman proceeds to urge the editor to prepare the way for his coming, and promises to have all his handbills "dun at your offiss."

"We must

"We must fetch the public somehow," he continues. work on their feelins come the moral on 'em strong. If it's a temperance community, tell 'em I sined the pledge fifteen minits arter ise born. But, on the contrary, if your people take their tods, say that Mister Ward is as genial a feller as we ever metfull of conviviality, and the life and sole of the soshul Bored. Take, don't you?"

Mister Ward concludes his epistle by condensing its whole meaning into a very short postscript:

"You scratch my back, and Ile scratch your back."

This letter made a wonderful hit. It was immediately copied into many hundreds of newspapers, and was generally taken as the genuine production of a showman. Other letters in the same vein followed, which carried the name of Artemus Ward and the Cleveland "Plaindealer" to the ends of the earth. For two or three years they figured in the funny column of most of the periodicals in America, England, and Australia.

But except the reputation which the letters gave, they were of little advantage to their author. His salary may have been increased a few dollars a week, and he added a little to his income by contributions to the comic papers of New York. No man, indeed, is so cruelly plundered as the writer of short amusing pieces, easily clipped and copied. He writes a comic piece for a trifling sum, which amuses perhaps five millions of people, and no one compensates him except the original purchaser. There are, for example, comic dialogues which have done service for fifteen years at negro minstrel entertainments, and now make thousands of people laugh every night, for which the author received three dollars.

Artemus Ward, anxious to buy back the family homestead in which to shelter the old-age of his widowed mother, soon discovered that he could never do it by making jokes, unless he could sell them over and over again. So he tried comic lecturing. The first night the experiment was a failure. A violent storm of snow, sleet, and wind thinned the audience in Clinton Hall, New York- to such a degree, that the lecturer lost thirty dollars by the enterprise. A tour in New England, however, had better results. He lectured a hundred nights, by which he cleared nearly eight thousand dollars; and he was soon able to establish his mother in the comfortable village home in which he was born.