_Und noch weiter_. There was published in New York at that time (1860) an illustrated comic weekly called _Vanity Fair_. There was also in the city a kind of irregular club known as the Bohemians, who had been inspired by Murger's novel of that name to imitate the life of its heroes. They met every evening at a lager-beer restaurant kept by a German named Pfaff. For a year or two they made a great sensation in New York. Their two principal men were Henry Clapp and Fitz-James O'Brien. Then there were Frank Wood and George Arnold, W. Winter, C. Gardette, and others. Wood edited _Vanity Fair_, and all the rest contributed to it. There was some difficulty or other between Wood and Mr. Stephens, the _gerant_ of the weekly, and Wood left, followed by all the clan. I was called in in the emergency, and what with writing myself, and the aid of R. H. Stoddard, T. B. Aldrich, and a few more, we made a very creditable appearance indeed. Little by little the Bohemians all came back, and all went well. Now I must here specify, for good reasons, that I held myself very strictly aloof from the Bohemians, save in business affairs. This was partly because I was married, and I never saw the day in my life when to be regarded as a real Bohemian vagabond, or shiftless person, would not have given me the horrors. I would have infinitely preferred the poorest settled employment to such life. I mention this because a very brilliant and singular article entitled "Charles G. Leland _l'ennemi des Allemands_" (this title angered me), which appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in 1871, speaks of me by implication as a frequenter of Pfaff's, declaring that I there introduced Artemus Ward to the Bohemian brotherhood, and that it was entirely due to me that Mr. Browne was brought out before the American World. This is quite incorrect. Mr. Browne had made a name by two or three very popular sketches before I had ever seen him. But it is very true that I aided him to write, and suggested and encouraged the series of sketches which made him famous, as he himself frankly and generously declared, for Charles Browne was at heart an honest gentleman, if there ever was one; which is the one thing in life better than success.