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.
With one or two exceptions, every change that he made in his position was due to his insistent desire to maintain his personal independence as a writer. He left the Indianapolis Sentinel because he did not wish to conform to its political policy. His editorial work on the New York World became irksome on this same account. He broke with the managers of the Buffalo Courier in 1886 because he disliked Grover Cleveland and because he did not propose to stultify his editorial utterances in a newspaper whose proprietor was specially friendly at the time to the Buffalo President. He is said to have refused a flattering offer from Charles A. Dana to become editorial writer on the New York Sun because he did not believe he could conform to Mr. Dana’s ideas, however much he might admire the genius of that brilliant editor.
He set his editorial chair on a calm high level and from it addressed daily a clientele that loyally followed him in all his journeyings through fields of philosophy, history, poetry, romance and even the common things of everyday life. To read him once was to seek him again and remain his disciple.
He might have made his fame rest on his poetry, but he subordinated that gift to his passion for regular, constant work in his editorial chair, indulging in flights of fancy only as a pastime.
Mr. O’Connor was a master of the English language; indeed, it is doubtful if any man on the American press ever wrote it better. Some twenty years ago a correspondent of the New York Sun asked Mr. Dana for information regarding literary style. In the course of his reply he said:
“Among the newspaper writers of our own country and of the present day, perhaps the best style is that of Mr. Joseph O’Connor, the editor of The Post Express of Rochester. It is terse, lucid, calm, argumentative, and without a trace of effort or affectation.”
After quoting this tribute, said Father Cronin of the Buffalo Union and Times: “It is no small source of pride and gratification to us to know that one of the great princes of American journalism is an Irish American. Mr. O’Connor’s pen is like the Damascene blade, polished and beautiful, yet withal so smooth and keen that the victim of its blow is severed in twain almost without realizing the catastrophe. Long may Joseph O’Connor wield it, as he has always wielded it, a menace to evil and a swift and sure protection to the right.”