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. His reputation grew steadily, and his first volume, 'Artemus Ward, His Book,' was brought out in 1862. In 1863 he went to San Francisco by way of the Isthmus and returned overland. This journey was chronicled in a short volume, 'Artemus Ward, His Travels.' He had already undertaken a career of lecturing, and his comic entertainments, given in a style peculiarly his own, became very popular. The mimetic gift is frequently found in the humorist; and Browne's peculiar drawl, his profound gravity and dreamy, far-away expression, the unexpected character of his jokes and the surprise with which he seemed to regard the audience, made a combination of a delightfully quaint absurdity. Browne himself was a very winning personality, and never failed to put his audience in good humor. None who knew him twenty-nine years ago think of him without tenderness. In 1866 he visited England, and became almost as popular there as lecturer and writer for Punch. He died from a pulmonary trouble in Southampton, March 6th, 1867, being not quite thirty-three years old. He was never married.