Mr. Stephens realising that I needed an assistant, and observing that Browne's two sketches of the Showman's letter and the Mormons had made him well known, invited him to take a place in our office. He was a shrewd, naif, but at the same time modest and unassuming young man. He was a native of Maine, but familiar with the West. Quiet as he seemed, in three weeks he had found out everything in New York. I could illustrate this by a very extraordinary fact, but I have not space for everything. I proposed to him to continue his sketches. "Write," I said, "a paper on the Shakers." He replied that he knew nothing about them. I had been at Lenox, Massachusetts, where I had often gone to New Lebanon and seen their strange worship and dances, and while on the _Illustrated News_ had had a conference with their elders on an article on the Shakers. So I told him what I knew, and he wrote it, making it a condition that I would correct it. He wrote the sketch, and others. He was very slow at composition, which seemed strange to me, who was accustomed to write everything as I now do, _currente calamo_ (having written all these memoirs, so far, within a month--more or less, and certainly very little more). From this came his book. When he wrote the article describing his imprisonment, there was in it a sentence, "Jailor, I shall die unless you bring me something to eat!" In the proof we found, "I shall die unless you bring me something to _talk_." He was just going to correct this, when I cried, "For Heaven's sake, Browne, let that stand! It's best as it is." He did so, and so the reader may find it in his work.