In the 1850s, Cleveland newspaperman Charles Farrar Brown began writing satirical columns as the character Artemus Ward, “a mostly literate showman of twenty-two years experience as a ‘base exhibiter of depraved monkeys and unprincipled wax works’.” By the end of the decade, “he added the ‘e’ to his last name, climbed onto a stage in Connecticut and made people laugh for an hour or so.” No performer had tried anything like that in a theater before.