ng that I there introduced Artemus Ward to the Bohemian
brotherhood, and that it was entirely due to me that Mr. Browne was
brought out before the American World. This is quite incorrect. Mr.
Browne had made a name by two or three very popular sketches before I had
ever seen him. But it is very true that I aided him to write, and
suggested and encouraged the series of sketches which made him famous, as
he himself frankly and generously declared, for Charles Browne was at
heart an honest gentleman, if there ever was one; which is the one thing
in life better than success.

Mr. Stephens realising that I needed an assistant, and observing that
Browne's two sketches of the Showman's letter and the Mormons had made
him well known, invited him to take a place in our office. He was a
shrewd, naif, but at the same time modest and unassuming young man. He
was a native of Maine, but familiar with the West. Quiet as he seemed,
in three weeks he had found out everything in New York. I could
illustrate this by a very extraordinary fact, but I have not space for
everything. I proposed to him to continue his sketches. "Write," I
said, "a paper on the Shakers." He replied that he knew nothing about
them. I had been at Lenox, Massachusetts, where I had often gone to New
Lebanon and seen their strange worship and dances, and while on the
_Illustrated News_ had had a conference with their elders on an article
on the Shakers. So I told him what I knew, and he wrote it, making it a
condition that I would correct it. He wrote the sketch, and others. He
was very slow at composition, which seemed strange to me, who was
accustomed to write everything as I now do, _currente calamo_ (having
written all these memoirs, so far, within a month--more or less, and
certainly very little more). From this came his book.

When he wrote the article describing his imprisonment, there was in it a
sentence, "Jailor, I shall die unless you bring me something to eat!" In
the proof we found, "I shall die unless you bring me something to
_talk_." He was just going to correct this, when I cried, "For Heaven's
sake, Browne, let that stand! It's best as it is." He did so, and so
the reader may find it in his work.

Meanwhile the awful storm of war had gathered and was about to burst. I
may here say that there was a kind of literary club or association of
ladies and gentlemen who met once a week of evenings in the Studio
Buildings, where I had ma