shall only mention how kind and noble-minded was the man of whom I
write, without dragging forward special and particular acts in proof
of my words, as if the goodness of his mind and character needed the
certificate of facts.

I first saw Charles Browne at a literary club; he had only been a
few hours in London, and he seemed highly pleased and excited at
finding himself in the old city to which his thoughts had so often
wandered. Browne was an intensely sympathetic man. His brain and
feelings were as a "lens," and he received impressions immediately.
No man could see him without liking him at once. His manner was
straightforward and genial, and had in it the dignity of a
gentleman, tempered, as it were, by the fun of the humorist. When
you heard him talk you wanted to make much of him, not because he
was "Artemus Ward," but because he was himself, for no one less
resembled "Artemus Ward" than his author and creator, Charles Farrar
Browne. But a few weeks ago it was remarked to me that authors were
a disappointing race to know, and I agreed with the remark, and I
remember a lady once said to me that the personal appearance of
poets seldom "came up" to their works. To this I replied that,
after all, poets were but men, and that it was as unreasonable to
expect that the late Sir Walter Scott could at all resemble a
Gathering of the Clans as that the late Lord Macaulay should appear
anything like the Committal of the Seven Bishops to the Tower. I
told the lady that she was unfair to eminent men if she hoped that
celebrated engineers would look like tubular bridges, or that Sir
Edwin Landseer would remind her of a "Midsummer Night's Dream." I
mention this because, of all men in the world, my friend Charles
Browne was the least like a showman of any man I ever encountered.
I can remember the odd half disappointed look of some of the