ranks him sub specie humanitatis.  But to the American humorist all men are primarily men.  The waiter and the prince are equally ridiculous to him, because in each he finds similar incongruities between the man and his surroundings; but in England there is a deep impassable gulf between the man at the table and the man behind his chair.  This democratic independence of external and adventitious circumstance sometimes gives a tone of irreverence to American persiflage, and the temporary character of class distinctions in America undoubtedly diminishes the amount of literary material “in sight” but when, as in the case of Browne and Clemens, there is in the humorist’s mind a basis of reverence for things and persons that are really reverend, it gives a breadth and freedom to the humorous conception that is distinctively American.

We put Clemens and Browne in the same line, because in reading a page of either we feel at once the American touch.  Browne of course is not to be compared to Clemens in affluence or in range in depicting humorous character-types; but it must be remembered that Clemens has lived thirty active years longer than his predecessor did.  Neither has written a line that he would wish to blot for its foul suggestion, or because it ridiculed things that were lovely and of good report.  Both were educated in journalism, and came into direct contact with the strenuous and realistic life of labor.  And to repeat, though one was born and bred west of the Mississippi and the other far “down east,” both are distinctly American.  Had either been born and passed his childhood outside our magic line, this resemblance would not have existed.  And yet we cannot say precisely wherein this likeness lies, nor what caused it; so deep, so subtle, so pervading is the influence of nationality.  But their original expressions of the American humorous tone are worth ten thousand literary echoes of Sterne or Lamb or Dickens or Thackeray.

The education of young Browne was limited to the strictly preparatory years.  At the age of thirteen he was forced by the death of his father to try to earn his living.  When about fourteen, he was apprenticed to a Mr. Rex, who published a paper at Lancaster, New Hampshire.  He remained there about a year, then worked on various country papers, and finally passed three years in the printing-house of Snow and Wilder, Boston.  He then went to Ohio, and after working for some months on the Tiffin Advertiser, went to Toledo, where he remained till the fall of 1857.  Thence he went to Cleveland, Ohio, as local editor of the Plain Dealer.  Here appeared the humorous letters signed “Artemus Ward” and written in the character of an itinerant showman.  In 1860 he went to New York as editor of the comic journal Vanity Fair.