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.