A writer in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, not many years since, as follows: “There have been moments in the lives of various kind hearted and respectable citizens of California and Nevada, when, if Mark Twain were up before them as members of a vigilance committee for any mild crime, such as mule stealing or arson, it is to be feared his shrift would have been short. What a dramatic picture the idea conjures up, to be sure! Mark, before those honest men, infuriated by his practical jokes, trying to show them what an innocent creature he was when it came to mules, or how the only policy of fire insurance he held had lapsed, and how void of guile he was in any direction, and all with that inimitable drawl, that perplexed countenance, and the peculiar scraping back of the left foot, like a boy speaking his first piece at school. It is but fair to say that the fun Mark mixed up for citizens in those days, was not altogether appreciated in the midst of it, for some one, touched too sharply, surge bat amari aliquid, and Mark had another denouncer joined to the wounded throng. . . . . . He is keenly sensitive to sympathy or criticism, and relates, as one of the most harrowing experiences of his life, a six hours’ ride across England, his fellow traveler an Englishman, who, shortly after they started, drew forth the first volume of the English edition of Innocents Abroad from his pocket, and calmly perused it from beginning to end without a smile. Then he drew forth the second volume and read it as solemnly as the first. Mark says he thought he should die, yet John Bull was probably enjoying it after his own undemonstrative style.”
In another instance the same writer says of Mark Twain: “This literary wag has performed some services which entitle him to the gratitude of his generation. He has run the traditional Sunday-school book boy through his literary mangle and turned him out washed and ironed into a proper state of flatness and collapse. That whining, canting, early-dying anæmic creature was the nauseating model held up to the full-blooded mischievous lads of by-gone years as worthy their imitation. He poured his religious hypocrisy over every honest pleasure a boy had. He whined his lachrymose warnings on every playground. He vexed their lives. So, when Mark grew old enough he went gunning for him, and lo, wherever his soul may be, the skin of the strumous young pietist is now neatly tacked up to view on the Sunday-school door of to-day as a warning, and the lads of to-day see no particular charm in a priggish, hydropathical existence.”
Samuel Langhorne Clemens is in the high tide of his success. He is yet a young man, as far as the literary life goes. Outside of his book making, he has given the fun-loving public some admirable things in the way of wit and humor through the pages of the leading magazines. The originality of his writings in the past is retained in his work of the present, and he gives promise of many original things in the future. He has a liking for the monotonous labor of literary work, his health is as yet unimpaired, he has been fortunate in love and in financial affairs, is consequently happy, and will yet give to the world of letters many quaint, bright, and original ideas. Artemus Ward and Mark Twain are without a doubt the two leading humorists of the present century. While we have the Artemus that was, we possess the Mark that is. He leads the van of humorists who eke out an existence in the present. He is the prince of funny men. Long live the prince.
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE.
Probably no writer in America—or out of it, for that matter—ever attained such universal notoriety, in such a brief space of time, as did that king of American humorists, Artemus Ward. His career was short but successful, and his fame will live as long as does the English language. Charles Farrar Browne was born in the hamlet of Waterford, Maine, on the 26th day of April, 1834, and died at Southampton, England, March 6, 1867. After graduating from the free village school at Waterford he sought and obtained employment in a printing office. As a printer’s apprentice he traveled throughout the New England States, stopping for a brief period at one place and then another. Finally Charles settled down in Boston, where he obtained employment as compositor in the office of a weekly paper. He soon after began to compose comic stories and essays for different periodicals, which met with medium success.
Browne remained there but a short time, however, being of a roving disposition, and a few months later he gave up his idea of settling in Boston and left for the West, with but one suit of clothes (those were on his back) and with a few cents in his pocket. He obtained work as local reporter on papers in Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio, and finally brought up at Cleveland in 1857, in which city he obtained a situation as reporter on the morning Plain Dealer. His old associates in Cleveland tell me that Browne at this time was considered one of the characters of the town. His dress was always shabby and scant; his habits irregular, and his general appearance that of a country “greenhorn.” He delighted in wearing on his head a large crowned slouch hat, and his pantaloons were as a rule nearly a foot too short for him. Being tall, slim, and bony, his appearance in those days as he slouched along the streets of Cleveland in search of items could not have been very prepossessing, to say the least. “He was then,” says a well known humorist, “a mild-mannered, sunny-tempered young fellow of twenty-three, who delighted in witty anecdotes, and told droll stories in an inimitable way.”
Despite his looks, Browne was a brilliant and ready writer. He became involved in numerous journalistic quarrels, and his cutting remarks and timely rebukes to his contemporaries soon made known the fact that he could not be mastered.
A. Miner Griswold, the Cincinnati humorist, tells the following story of Browne at that time: “The first night of our acquaintance he took me to a school exhibition on Cleveland heights, and his whispered comments upon the performance amused me greatly. They gave a portion of the play of Rolla: ‘How now, Gomez, what bringest thou?’ Gomez: ‘On yonder mountain we surprised an old Peruvian.’ Said Brown in a whisper, ‘They knew him by his bark, a small bundle of which you perceive he carries on his shoulder.’ There have been many Peruvian bark jokes since, but that was then fresh to me—too fresh, perhaps. But one finds plenty of funny people at twenty-two, and I little dreamed that my entertainer, the green young man by the name of Browne, was destined to make the whole world laugh, and weep, too, when it heard of his death. It did occur to me as we drove back in the buggy that my new friend was the least bit eccentric. After riding along in silence for a time he suddenly declared that he liked me, and asked me if I had any objections to one embrace. Then he attempted to throw his arms around me, but owing to the darkness, I suppose, he embraced a new plug hat that I wore, and when he let go it was crushed into a shapeless mass. He apologized profusely when he discovered what he had done, appeared to give way to a momentary burst of tears, and then said that Shakespeare wouldn’t have succeeded as a local editor, because he hadn’t the necessary fancy and imagination.
“Barring an unreasonable desire to drive off the canal bridge into the water, which I prevailed upon him to relinquish with some difficulty, we reached the city without further incident. His humorous account of the school exhibition in the next day’s paper confirmed me in the impression that the young man by the name of Browne possessed a rare streak of original humor.”