JOSEPH O’CONNOR, EDITOR, AUTHOR AND POET, WHO DECEASED AT ROCHESTER, N. Y., OCTOBER 9TH, 1908. SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. ONE OF HIS FAVORITE POEMS. A great editor laid down forever a brilliant, beautiful and useful pen when Joseph O’Connor, the Rochesterian, passed into Eternity from his home in Rochester on the night of October 9, 1908. In a few hours the news had flashed to all points of the compass, bringing a pause and a hush of sadness to thousands of homes, from Maine to California, wherein his unique personality was known and loved through his nearly forty years of journalistic leadership. Born in New York State of Irish parents in 1841, he was educated in the best schools of his native State for the practice of the law, but he early chose journalism instead of law for his life work and he made a magnificent success of it. He brought to the work a mind well-stocked with more of the true history of the world than falls to the lot of most students of history. He brought to his work a mind imbued with the true Christian philosophy of the Catholic catechism. He had formed from youth up a habit of broad, kindly outlook on things in general. He assumed and maintained a manly attitude in politics, uncompromising in principle, but tolerant of other men’s opinions. He had a born poet’s appreciation of true poetry, and a literary judgment that came to be universally respected. He had a gift of expression as a model of unique, finished, sincere writing. And his humility was the best of it all. He won his readers to his way of seeing things as much by the very apparent unconsciousness of his own superiority as by his logical presentation of his subject. Through all his long life of varied editorship and many degrees of political and literary success, there is no pessimism charged to his account, no animosity, no bitterness; not even discourtesy. Many a time in the heat of a political campaign he had to strike at a champion of the other side, but his blow was always leonine. It was a settler of the subject in dispute, but it left no ugly memories—no galling personalities ever marred his political battles. He scored his successes by the friendly hand shakes of his worsted antagonists. He prized his independence in politics, and never jeopardized it by accepting favors or honors from friend or foe.