Col. John E. Hatcher ("G. Washington Bricks"), a newspaper humorist who won wide fame in his day and generation, but who is now quite sealed over and forgotten, was born near Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1828. When a boy his parents emigrated to Tennessee. At the age of twenty years Hatcher became editor of The American Democrat at Florence, Alabama; and in 1852 he purchased The Mirror, a paper which General Zollicoffer had established at Columbia, Tennessee. Some time later Hatcher disposed of that property, and accepted a position on the Nashville Patriot. He was fast gaining a reputation for his humorous sketches, paragraphs, and rhymes, which were floating through many Southern newspapers under his pen-name of "G. Washington Bricks." Hatcher relinquished the pen for the sword when the Civil War began, becoming an officer on the staff of General Cheatham. After the war, or in 1867, Colonel Hatcher settled at Louisville, Kentucky, joining the staff of Prentice's then fast-expiring Journal. When, in the following year, the Journal was united with the Courier, he became editor of the Daily Democrat; and when that paper was consolidated with the other two to make The Courier-Journal, he became one of the editors of the new paper, and continued to write for it so long as he lived. For a short time he did some special work for a Louisville publication known as The Evening Express, conducted by Mr. Overton. A few years before his death Colonel Hatcher returned to his old home at Columbia, Tennessee, and founded The Mail; but he became "outside editor" of The Courier-Journal, laying down his pen for that paper only with his death, which occurred at Columbia, Tennessee, March 26, 1879. Consumption caused his demise and robbed Southern journalism of one of its finest minds. Colonel Hatcher married Miss Lizzie McKnight, daughter of a prosperous merchant at Iuka, Mississippi, and the early death of their only child, a daughter, coupled with consumption, hastened his own death. As an editorial paragraphist Colonel Hatcher has never had a peer in Kentucky or the South. Prentice, the father of the paragraph, was a wit; Hatcher was a humorist; and his writings were often credited to Prentice by those who were not acquainted with the inner workings of the office. Henry Watterson has written this fine tribute to Colonel Hatcher's memory:

He was one of the silent singers of the press, but he lacked nothing of eminence except good fortune; for he was a humorist of the very first water, and had he lived under different conditions could not have failed of the celebrity to which his talents entitled him. Born not merely poor, but far inland, with no early advantages, and later in life with none except those furnished by a rural newspaper; ill health overtook him before he had divined his own powers.... His wit was not so aggressive as that of Mr. Prentice. But he had more humor. He died in the prime of life and left behind him a professional tradition, which is cherished by the little circle of friends to whom a charming personality and many brilliant gifts made him very dear.

Bibliography. The Courier-Journal (March 27, 1879); Oddities of Southern Life, by Henry Watterson (Boston, 1882).

NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPHS

[From The Courier-Journal]

Garters with monogram clasps are now worn by the pretty girls. They are rather a novelty yet, but we hope to see more of them.

"The New York Telegraph advises people to marry for love and not for money." Good advice, certainly; but inasmuch as you will always be in want of money if you marry for love, and always in want of love if you marry for money, your safest way is to marry for a little of both.

Some of our contemporaries will persist in speaking of us as a "rebel." That we fought for the stars and bars with a heroism of which Marathon, Leuctra, and Thermopylae never even dreamed, the bones of half-a-dozen substitutes which lie bleeding upon as many "stormy heights and carnage covered fields" bear testimony abundant and indisputable, and that we suffer ourselves still to be called a "rebel" without unsheathing the avenging dagger and wading up to our knees in gore, is simply because there is already as much blood upon the hands of our substitutes as we can furnish soap to wash off without becoming a bankrupt. Nevertheless, if this thing is much longer persisted in, there may come a time when virtue will cease to be a forebearance. One more taste of blood, this sanguinary arm once more uplifted to smite, and the world will shudder.

General Grant says he won't call an extra session of Congress unless the war in Europe is likely to give us trouble. So he is determined that if the gods bring us one calamity, he will immediately step forward with another.

For list of candidates see first page.—Banner. For the candidates themselves—but you needn't trouble yourself to see them; they'll see you.

The French General Failly, who was killed by a Prussian shell, and was afterward murdered by his own soldiers, and subsequently blew out his own brains, is now a prisoner at Mayence—whether dead or alive, the telegraph does not inform us.

The Glasgow Times tells of a man in Georgia, fifty years of age, who never in his life drank a glass of whiskey, smoked a pipe, or courted a woman. The poor wretch has lived utterly in vain. The man who has never sat by a beautiful woman, with a pipe in his mouth, a glass of whiskey in one hand, and the whalebones of her palpitating stays in the other, and "with a lip unused to the cool breath of reason, told his love," has no more idea of Paradise than a deaf and dumb orang-outang has of metaphysics. Even without the pipe and whiskey there is, strictly speaking, nothing disagreeable about it.

The United States navy has but one Admiral Poor. We wish we could say it has but one poor admiral.