This idyllic life soon ceased.  When the tide of war rolled over central Georgia, it swept many lives out of their accustomed paths and destroyed many a support around which budding aspirations had wound their tendrils.  The “printer’s boy” sat upon a fence on the old Turner plantation, watching Slocum’s Corps march by, and amiably receiving the good-natured gibes and jests of the soldiers, who apparently found something irresistibly mirth-provoking in the quaint little figure by the wayside.  Sherman was marching to the sea, and the Georgia boy was taking his first view of the progress of war.

Among the many enterprises trampled to earth by those ruthless feet was the Countryman, which survived the desolating raid but a short time.  It was years before the young journalist knew another home.  For some months he set type on the Macon Daily Telegraph, going from there to New Orleans as private secretary of the editor of the Crescent Monthly.  When the Crescent waned and disappeared from the journalistic sky, he returned to Georgia and became editor, compositor, pressman, mailing clerk, and entire force on the Forsyth Advertiser.

A pungent editorial upon the abuses of the State government, which appeared in the Advertiser, attracted the attention of Colonel W.T.  Thompson and led him to offer Mr. Harris a place on the staff of the Savannah Daily News.  Happily, there lived in Savannah the charming young lady who was to be the loving centre of the pleasant home of “Uncle Remus.”  The marriage took place in 1873, and Mr. Harris remained with the News until ’76, when, to escape yellow fever, he removed to Atlanta.  He was soon after placed on the editorial staff of the Constitution, and in its columns Uncle Remus was first introduced to the world.

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In his home in West End, “Snap-Bean Farm,” he lived in calm content with his harmonious family and his intimate friends, Shakespeare and his associates, and those yet older companions who have come down to us from ancient Biblical times.  Some of his intimates were chosen from later writers.  Among poets, he told me that Tom Moore was his most cherished companion, the one to whom he fled for consolation in moments of life’s insufficiencies.

Mr. Harris had no objection to talking in sociable manner of other writers, but if his visitor did not wish to see him close up like a clam and vanish to the seclusion of an upper room it was better not to mention Uncle Remus.  Neither had he any fancy for the kind of talk that prevails at “pink teas” and high functions of society in general.  Anything that would be appropriate to the topics introduced in such places would never occur to him, and the vapory nothingness was so filled with mysterious terrors for him that he fled before them in unspeakable alarm.

[Illustration:  SNAP-BEAN FARM, ATLANTA, GEORGIA The residence of Joel Chandler Harris]