In the retreat of the rural regions, where the first lesson learned alike by members of both sexes is that of independence and self reliance, and where is straightway resisted anyone's interference with liberty, private affairs, and "belongings," is the basis of a series of productions in his little periodical, which themselves would have given Hooper fame. The intrusion of a polite census taker into the cabin homes of the backwoods, where statistical information was sought about poultry, pigs, soap, cows and "garden truck," and where the rustic dames resented such intrusion with broomsticks and pokers, afforded to this man of genius an opportunity to hit off some rare humor, and in response to his nature he did so. The scene, the actors, involving the polite efforts of the official to explain, and the garrulous replies of the doughty dames, embracing throughout the dialogue and the dialect, are depicted with the hand of the master and the skill of the artist. With its columns weekly laden with merriment so rare, the once obscure "Banner" became the most popular journal in the state, and far beyond, for it was sought throughout the south and the comical stories were copied far and wide. Encouraged by the popular reception given these effusions, Hooper addressed himself to a more pretentious venture by the preparation of his "Simon Suggs." He had the basis of the character to be delineated in a certain rude rustic of waggish proclivities who hung about the village of Dadeville, and was well known throughout Tallapoosa and the adjoining counties. With him as a nucleus, Hooper in the exercise of his genius, constructed his "Simon Suggs." That which gives to the production vitality is its unquestioned fidelity to a phase of life prevailing in those early days, while it is underlaid by principles which revealed actual conditions. The portraiture is that of an illiterate, but cunning backwoodsman, bent on getting the most out of life, no matter how, keen, foxy, double-faced and double-tongued who plied his vocation in the perpetration of fraud by cant and hypocrisy, pretended piety, and church membership.