went marching through Georgia. Slocum’s corps was reviewed by Harris sitting astride a fence. This parade left the neighborhood in chaos, and young Harris and _The Countryman_ took a long vacation. At last peace and quiet and the issue of _The Countryman_ were restored. But the paper had had its day. Mr. Harris was now a full-fledged compositor, and he set his “string” of the Macon Daily _Telegraph_ for some months. Then he left to go to New Orleans as the private secretary of the editor of _The Crescent Monthly_. This position was not arduous, and Mr. Harris found time to write bright paragraphs for the city press at about the same time that George W. Cable was trying his hand at the same kind of work. _The Crescent Monthly_ soon waned, and with its end Mr. Harris found himself back in Georgia as editor of the Forsyth _Advertiser_, which was and is one of the most influential weekly papers in Georgia. He was not only editor, but he set most of the type, worked off the edition on a hand-press, and wrapped and directed his papers for the mail. His editorials here, directed against certain abuses in the State, were widely copied for their pungent criticism and bubbling humor. They attracted the attention of Colonel W. T. Thompson, author of “Major Jones’s Courtship,” who was then editor of the Savannah _Daily News_, and he offered Mr. Harris a place on his staff. It was accepted. This was in 1871. In 1873 Mr. Harris was married. He remained in Savannah until September, 1876, when the yellow-fever epidemic caused him to go up in the mountains to Atlanta, where he became an editor of the _Constitution_. At that time the paper was beginning to make a more than local reputation by the humorous Negro dialect sketches by Mr. S. W. Small, under the name of “Old Si.” Shortly after Mr. Harris’s arrival Mr. Small left the _Constitution_ to engage in another enterprise, and the proprietors, in their anxiety to replace one of the most attractive features of their paper, turned to Mr. Harris for aid. He was required to furnish two or three sketches a week. He took an old Negro with whom he had been familiar on the Turner place, and made him chief spokesman in several character sketches. Their basis was the projection of the old-time Negro against the new condition of things brought about by the War.