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Marse Henry (Volume 1) - An Autobiography by Henry Watterson
page 74 of 209 (35%)
others, and tried his hand as a "sketchist" for a volume edited by Mrs.
Partington. His early effusions bore the signature of "Chub." From the Hub
he emigrated to the West. At Toledo, Ohio, he worked as a "typo" and later
as a "local" on a Toledo newspaper. Then he went to Cleveland, where as
city editor of the Plain Dealer he began the peculiar vein from which still
later he worked so successfully.

The soubriquet "Artemus Ward," was not taken from the Revolutionary
general. It was suggested by an actual personality. In an adjoining town
to Cleveland there was a snake charmer who called himself Artemus Ward,
an ignorant witling or half-wit, the laughing stock of the countryside.
Browne's first communication over the signature of Artemus Ward purported
to emanate from this person, and it succeeded so well that he kept it up.
He widened the conception as he progressed. It was not long before his
sketches began to be copied and he became a newspaper favorite. He remained
in Cleveland from 1857 to 1860, when he was called to New York to take the
editorship of a venture called Vanity Fair. This died soon after. But
he did not die with it. A year later, in the fall of 1861, he made his
appearance as a lecturer at New London, and met with encouragement. Then he
set out _en tour_, returned to the metropolis, hired a hall and opened
with "the show." Thence onward all went well.

The first money he made was applied to the purchase of the old family
homestead in Maine, which he presented to his mother. The payments on this
being completed, he bought himself a little nest on the Hudson, meaning,
as he said, to settle down and perhaps to marry. But his dreams were not
destined to be fulfilled.

Thus, at the outset of a career from which much was to be expected, a man,
possessed of rare and original qualities of head and heart, sank out of the
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