SEARGENT S. PRENTISS AND HENRY W. GRADY.

SIMILARITY OF GENIUS AND PATRIOTISM.

By Joseph F. Pon.

HISTORY repeats itself, and genius does the same. The light which shines with electric brilliancy in one portion of a country, though suddenly extinguished, soon blazes forth with life and hope, in genial air and under propitious skies.

Eminent in illustration of this truth, is the very great similarity in the mental structure, the physical temperament and the personal qualities of Seargent S. Prentiss and Henry W. Grady. The first was born in bleak and sterile Maine, and yet his great heart was not hemmed in by the hills around which clung the memories of his Pilgrim fathers. It took within its spacious chambers, and nurtured in patriotic affection the new-found friends of his adopted home, in the semi-tropical valleys of the lower Mississippi. The other was born on Georgia soil, and Southern traditions, memories and methods of thought seemed but a second nature with him. It did not prevent his fullness to the brim with that Promethean flame and “milk of human kindness,” which caused him in boundless Americanism, to wear a constant smile, born of infinite hope and faith in the future of a great Republic, stretching from the rugged coast of Maine to the broad plazas of Texas—from the noble forests of Oregon to the coral reefs of Florida.

Each of these men combined with deep research and intuitive perception, an imagination as luxuriant as a tropical garden, and while each put forth “thoughts that breathed in words that burned,” he was ever careful in the exercise of his great gifts, that they should always be 422directed in the promotion of human happiness, and to stimulate the loftiest human exertion. When Prentiss or Grady spoke every listener felt the touch of the master hand as it played upon his heart-strings—felt the tingling of the blood in his fingers’ ends, and could not fail to enjoy the delightful silence of universal and spontaneous admiration. The eloquence of these two men was not of that school which deals in thundergusts of word-painting, devoid of reason, sense, or consistency. Their ideas are always comely, well-proportioned, clear in outline and yet not angular in structure. They spoke for God and humanity—for liberty—for love—for law. They did not pervert their great gifts from the purposes that Nature intended. They used their magic power to smooth and soften the rough, hard places of human life, to promote all ends and objects catholic, worthy, commendable—to charm and persuade the morose and unwilling—to denounce like Nathan—to warn like Cassandra—to encourage like an angel of light. When either of them spoke, he seemed to realize the sublimest purpose of his mission; and condensed his giant electric power, as the heat charges the summer cloud with the bolts that are soon to flash and shiver.

Prentiss died in the same year that Grady was born; and when he first closed his brilliant career at forty-two years of age, the second was but a smiling infant six weeks old. Each, cut off before he had reached the zenith, was

A mighty vessel foundered in the calm,

Its freight half given to the world.

The glorious sun of each “went down while it was yet day.”

Some extracts are here given, from an address delivered by Prentiss before the New England Society of New Orleans, on December 22, 1845. These will be followed by some from Grady’s Boston speech. Prentiss at the time named, was about the same age that Grady was when he died. In opening Prentiss said: “This is a day dear to the sons of New England, and ever held by them in sacred remembrance. On this day, from every quarter of the globe, they 423gather in spirit around the Rock of Plymouth, and hang upon the urn of their Pilgrim fathers, the garlands of filial gratitude and affection. We have assembled for the purpose of participating in this honorable duty—of performing this pious pilgrimage. To-day we will visit that memorable spot. We gaze upon the place where a feeble band of persecuted exiles founded a mighty nation; and our hearts will exult with proud gratification, as we remember that on that barren shore our ancestors planted not only empire, but freedom.

“Of the future but little is known; clouds and darkness rest upon it. We yearn to become acquainted with its hidden secrets—we stretch out our arms toward its shadowy inhabitants—we invoke our posterity, but they answer us not. We turn for relief to the past, that mighty reservoir of men and things. There we are introduced into Nature’s vast laboratory, and witness her elemental labors. We mark with interest the changes in continents and oceans, by which she has notched the centuries. With curious wonder we gaze down the long aisles of the past, upon the generations that are gone. We behold as in a magic glass, men in form and feature like ourselves, actuated by the same motives, urged by the same passions, busily engaged in shaping out both their own destinies and ours. We approach them, and they refuse not our invocation. We hold converse with the wise philosophers, the sage legislators, and divine poets. But most of all among the innumerable multitudes that peopled the past, we seek our own ancestors, drawn toward them by an irresistible sympathy. With reverent solicitude we examine into their character and actions, and as we find them worthy or unworthy, our hearts swell with pride or our cheeks glow with shame.”

Speaking of the simplicity of the Pilgrim habits, Prentiss goes on: “In founding their colony they sought neither wealth nor conquest; but only peace and freedom. From the moment they touched the shore, they labored with orderly, systematic and persevering industry. They cultivated, 424without a murmur, a poor and ungrateful soil, which even now yields but a stubborn obedience to the dominion of the plow. They brought with them neither wealth nor power, but the principles of civil and religious freedom. They cherished, cultivated and developed them to a full and luxuriant maturity; and furnished them to their posterity as the only sure and permanent foundations for free government. We are proud of our native land, and turn with fond affection to its rocky shores. Behold the thousand temples of the Most High, that nestle in its happy valleys and crown its swelling hills. See how their glittering spires pierce the sky—celestial conductors ready to avert the lightning of an angry heaven!”

Himself the son of a ship-builder, he thus speaks of the enterprise of the Pilgrims: “They have wrestled with Nature, till they have prevailed against her, and compelled her reluctantly to reverse her own laws. The sterile soil has become productive under their sagacious culture, and the barren rock, astonished, finds itself covered with luxuriant and unaccustomed verdure. Upon the banks of every river they build temples of industry, and stop the squanderings of the spendthrift waters. They bind the Naiades of the brawling stream; they drive the Dryades from their accustomed haunts, and force them to desert each favorite grove: for from river, creek, and bay they are busy transforming the crude forests into staunch and gallant vessels. From every inlet and indenture along the rocky shore, swim forth these ocean-birds—born in the wildwood—fledged upon the wave. Behold how they spread their white pinions to the favoring breeze, and wing their flight to every quarter of the globe—the carrier pigeons of the world!”

But lastly how brimming with pathos, how pregnant with patriotic ardor, is the following: “Glorious New England! Thou art still true to thy ancient fame, and worthy of thy ancestral honors. We thy children have assembled in this far-distant land to celebrate thy birthday. A thousand fond associations throng upon us, roused 425by the spirit of the hour. On thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of the morning, the gentle recollections of our early life; around thy hills and mountains cling like gathering mists the mighty memories of the Revolution; and far away on the horizon of the past, gleam like thine own Northern lights, the awful virtues of our Pilgrim sires. But while we devote this day to the remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy lot is cast. We exult in the reflection that, though we count by thousands the miles which separate us from our birthplace, still our country is the same. We have but changed our chamber in the paternal mansion; in all its rooms we are at home, and all who inhabit it are our brothers. We are no exiles meeting upon the banks of a foreign river, to swell its waters with our home-sick tears. Here floats the same banner which nestled above our boyish heads, except that its mighty folds are wider, and its glittering stars increased in number.”

The sound of this eloquent tongue was stilled, but the “divine afflatus” with which it was tuned was transferred to, and continued in another. Near the birthplace of the noble Prentiss, and surrounded by those who were proud of his fame, Grady referred to those surroundings and the objects of his visit, when he said: “Happy am I that this mission has brought my feet at last to press New England’s historic soil, and my eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. Here within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill—where Webster thundered and Longfellow sang, Emerson thought, and Channing preached—here in the cradle of American letters, and almost of American liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that every American owes New England, when first he stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange apparition! This stern and unique figure, carved from the ocean and the wilderness, its majesty kindling and growing amid the storms of winters and of wars,—until at last the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed in the sunshine, and the heroic workers rested at its base,—while startled kings and emperors gazed 426and marveled that from the rude touch of this handful, cast on a bleak and unknown shore, should have come the embodied genius of human government, and the perfected model of human liberty! God bless the memory of those immortal workers, and prosper the fortunes of their living sons, and perpetuate the inspiration of their handiwork.”

Faithful to the memories of his childhood, and to the devotion of his mature years, visions of his distant home rise to his mental eye, and with a master’s magic touch he spreads the picture on the glowing canvas: “Far to the South, Mr. President, separated from this section by a line once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in fratricidal blood, and now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow, lies the fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and hospitable people. There is centered all that can please or prosper human kind. A perfect climate above a fertile soil, yields to the husbandman every product of the temperate zone. There, by night, the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and the wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf. In the same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains.”

In speaking of southern citizenship, and the perils of its present environment, Grady says: “The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men of the South, the men whose genius made glorious every page of the first seventy years of American history—whose courage and fortitude you tested in five years of the fiercest war—whose energy has made bricks without straw, and spread splendor amidst the ashes of their war-wasted homes—these men wear this problem in their hearts and their brains, by day and by night. They realize, as you cannot, what this problem means, what they owe to this kindly and dependent race, the measure of their debt to the world in whose despite they defended and maintained slavery. And though their feet are hindered in its undergrowth, and their march encumbered with its burdens, they have lost neither the patience from which comes clearness, nor the faith from which comes courage. Nor, sir, when in passionate moments is disclosed 427to them that vague and awful shadow, with its lurid abysses and its crimson stains, into which I pray God they may never go, are they struck with more of apprehension than is needed to complete their consecration!”

The conclusion of that grand address, so powerful in scope and faultless in diction, is a forcible reminder of Webster’s great peroration in his reply to Hayne on Foot’s Resolution. Grady here says: “A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of us to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir, are Americans, and we fight for human liberty. The uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth. France, Brazil—these are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression, this is our mission. And we shall not fail. God has sown in our soil the seed of his millennial harvest, and he will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until his full and perfect day has come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, all the way, aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day—when the old world will come to marvel and to learn, amid our gathered treasures—let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill, serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory, blazing out the path and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God’s appointed time!”

The love and respect of the Mississippians and Louisianans, and of the entire Southwest for Prentiss was only equaled by the admiration of the North for Grady. All honor to their memories, and peace to their patriot shades! The “clods of the valley will be sweet unto them” until the resurrection morn.

Columbus, Ga., Feb. 5, 1890.

428

SERMON BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE,

THE great Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N.Y., was crowded to-day, February 23, as it never had been before. Prominent in the congregation were most of the gentlemen who had attended the banquet of the Southern Society. Their presence was due to the intimation that Dr. Talmage was going to preach on the life and character of the Constitution’s late editor, Mr. Henry W. Grady. Dr. Talmage was at his best, in splendid voice, and his rounded periods made a deep impression upon all present. Taking for his text Isaiah viii., 1, “Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen,” the preacher said:

To Isaiah, with royal blood in his veins and a habitant of palaces, does this divine order come. He is to take a roll, a large roll, and write on it with a pen, not an angel’s pen, but a man’s pen. So God honored the pen and so he honored the manuscript. In our day the mightiest roll is the religious and secular newspaper, and the mightiest pen is the editor’s pen, whether for good or evil. And God says now to every literary man, and especially to every journalist: “Take thee a great roll and write in it with a man’s pen.”

THE NEWS ON THE MEDITERRANEAN.

Within a few weeks one of the strongest, most vivid and most brilliant of those pens was laid down on the editorial desk in Atlanta, never again to be resumed. I was far away at the time. We had been sailing up from the Mediterranean Sea, through the Dardanelles, which region is unlike anything I ever saw for beauty. There is not any other water scenery on earth where God has done so many picturesque things with islands. They are somewhat like the Thousand Islands of our American St. Lawrence, but 429more like heaven. Indeed, we had just passed Patmos, the place from which John had his apocalyptic vision. Constantinople had seemed to come out to greet us, for your approach to that city is different from any other city. Other cities as you approach them seem to retire, but this city, with its glittering minarets and pinnacles, seems almost to step into the water to greet you. But my landing there, that would have been to me an exhilaration, was suddenly stunned with the tidings of the death of my intimate friend, Henry W. Grady. I could hardly believe the tidings, for I had left on my study table at home letters and telegrams from him, those letters and telegrams having a warmth and geniality, and a wit such as he alone could express. The departure of no public man for many years has so affected me. For days I walked about as in a dream, and I resolved that, getting home, I would, for the sake of his bereaved household, and for the sake of his bereaved profession, and for the sake of what he had been to me, and shall continue to be as long as memory lasts, I would speak a word in appreciation of him, the most promising of Americans, and learn some of the salient lessons of his departure.

I have no doubt that he had enemies, for no man can live such an active life as he lived, or be so far in advance of his time without making enemies, some because he defeated their projects, and some because he outshone them. Owls and bats never did like the rising sun. But I shall tell you how he appeared to me, and I am glad that I told him while he was in full health what I thought of him. Memorial orations and gravestone epitaphs are often mean enough, for they say of a man after he is dead that which ought to have been said of him while living. One garland for a living brow is worth more than a mountain of japonicas and calla lilies heaped on a funeral casket. By a little black volume of fifty pages, containing the eulogiums and poems uttered and written at the demise of Clay and Webster and Calhoun and Lincoln and Sumner, the world tried to pay for the forty years of obloquy it heaped upon 430those living giants. If I say nothing in praise of a man while he lives I will keep silent when he is dead. Myrtle and weeping willow can never do what ought to have been done by amaranth and palm branch. No amount of “Dead March in Saul” rumbling from big organs at the obsequies can atone for non-appreciation of the man before he fell on sleep. The hearse cannot do what ought to have been done by chariot. But there are important things that need to be said about our friend, who was a prophet in American journalism, and who only a few years ago heard the command of my text: “Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen.”

A RETROSPECT OF LIFE.

His father dead, Henry W. Grady, a boy fourteen years of age, took up the battle of life. It would require a long chapter to record the names of orphans who have come to the top. When God takes away the head of the household He very often gives to some lad in that household a special qualification. Christ remembers how that His own father died early, leaving Him to support Himself and His mother and His brothers in the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth, and He is in sympathy with all boys and all young men in the struggle. You say: “Oh, if my father had only lived I would have had a better education and I would have had a more promising start, and there are some wrinkles on my brow that would not have been there.” But I have noticed that God makes a special way for orphans. You would not have been half the man you are if you had not been obliged from your early days to fight your own battles. What other boys got out of Yale and Harvard you got in the university of hard knocks. Go among successful merchants, lawyers, physicians and men of all occupations and professions, and there are many of them who will tell you: “At ten, or twelve, or fifteen years of age, I started for myself; father was sick, or father was dead.” But somehow they got through and got up. I account for it by the fact that there is a special dispensation of God 431for orphans. All hail, the fatherless and motherless! The Lord Almighty will see you through. Early obstacles for Mr. Grady were only the means for development of his intellect and heart. And lo! when at thirty-nine years of age he put down his pen and closed his lips for the perpetual silence, he had done a work which many a man who lives on to sixty and seventy and eighty years never accomplishes. There is a great deal of senseless praise of longevity, as though it were a wonderful achievement to live a good while. Ah, my friends, it is not how long we live, but how well we live and how usefully we live. A man who lives to eighty years and accomplishes nothing for God or humanity might better have never lived at all. Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and what did it amount to? In all those more than nine centuries he did not accomplish anything which seemed worth record. Paul lived only a little more than sixty, but how many Methuselahs would it take to make one Paul? Who would not rather have Paul’s sixty years than Methuselah’s nine hundred and sixty-nine? Robert McCheyne died at thirty years of age and John Summerfield at twenty-seven years of age, but neither earth nor heaven will ever hear the end of their usefulness. Longevity! Why, an elephant can beat you at that, for it lives a hundred and fifty and two hundred years. Gray hairs are the blossoms of the tree of life if found in the way of righteousness, but the frosts of the second death if found in the way of sin.

MR. GRADY AS A CHRISTIAN.

One of our able New York journals last spring printed a question and sent it to many people, and, among others, to myself: “Can the editor of a secular journal be a Christian?” Some of the newspapers answered no. I answered yes; and, lest you may not understand me, I say yes again. Summer before last, riding with Mr. Grady from a religious meeting in Georgia on Sunday night, he said to me some things which I now reveal for the first time, because it is appropriate now that I reveal them. 432He expressed his complete faith in the gospel, and expressed his astonishment and his grief that in our day so many young men were rejecting Christianity. From the earnestness and the tenderness and the confidence with which he spoke on these things I concluded that when Henry W. Grady made public profession of his faith in Christ, and took his place at the holy communion in the Methodist Church, he was honestly and truly Christian. That conversation that Sunday night, first in the carriage and then resumed in the hotel, impressed me in such a way that when I simply heard of his departure, without any of the particulars, I concluded that he was ready to go. I warrant there was no fright in the last exigency, but that he found what is commonly called “the last enemy” a good friend, and from his home on earth he went to a home in heaven. Yes, Mr. Grady not only demonstrated that an editor may be a Christian, but that a very great intellect may be gospelized. His mental capacity was so wonderful it was almost startling. I have been with him in active conversation while at the same time he was dictating to a stenographer editorials for the Atlanta Constitution. But that intellect was not ashamed to bow to Christ. Among his last dying utterances was a request for the prayers of the churches in his behalf.

There was that particular quality in him that you do not find in more than one person out of hundreds of thousands—namely, personal magnetism. People have tried to define that quality, and always failed, yet we have all felt its power. There are some persons who have only to enter a room or step upon a platform or into a pulpit, and you are thrilled by their presence, and when they speak your nature responds and you cannot help it. What is the peculiar influence with which such a magnetic person takes hold of social groups and audiences? Without attempting to define this, which is indefinable, I will say it seems to correspond to the waves of air set in motion by the voice or the movements of the body. Just like that atmospheric vibration is the moral or spiritual vibration which rolls out from the soul of what we 433call a magnetic person. As there may be a cord or rope binding bodies together, there may be an invisible cord binding souls. A magnetic man throws it over others as a hunter throws a lasso. Mr. Grady was surcharged with this influence, and it was employed for patriotism and Christianity and elevated purposes.

GREAT MEN MAY BE CHRISTIANS.

You may not know why, in the conversation which I had with Mr. Gladstone a few weeks ago, he uttered these memorable words about Christianity, some of which were cabled to America. He was speaking in reply to this remark: I said: “Mr. Gladstone, we are told in America by some people that Christianity does very well for weak-minded men and children in the infant class, but it is not fit for stronger minded men; but when we mention you, of such large intellectuality, as being a pronounced friend of religion, we silence their batteries.” Then Mr. Gladstone stopped on the hillside where we were exercising, and said: “The older I grow, the more confirmed I am in my faith in religion.” “Sir,” said he, with flashing eye and uplifted hand, “talk about the questions of the day, there is but one question, and that is the Gospel. That can and will correct everything. Do you have any of that dreadful agnosticism in America?” Having told him we had, he went on to say: “I am profoundly thankful that none of my children or kindred have been blasted by it. I am glad to say that about all the men at the top in Great Britain are Christians. Why, sir,” he said, “I have been in public position fifty-eight years, and forty-seven years in the cabinet of the British government, and during those forty-seven years I have been associated with sixty of the master minds of the century, and all but five of the sixty were Christians.” He then named the four leading physicians and surgeons of his country, calling them by name and remarking upon the high qualities of each of them and added: “They are all thoroughly Christian.” My friends, I think it will be quite respectable for a little longer to be 434the friends of religion. William E. Gladstone, a Christian; Henry W. Grady, a Christian. What the greatest of Englishmen said of England is true of America and of all Christendom. The men at the top are the friends of God and believers in the sanctities of religion, the most eminent of the doctors, the most eminent of the lawyers, the most eminent of the merchants, and there are no better men in all our land than some of those who sit in editorial chairs. And if that does not correspond with your acquaintanceship, I am sorry that you have fallen into bad company. In answer to the question put last spring, “Can a secular journalist be a Christian?” I not only answer in the affirmative, but I assert that so great are the responsibilities of that profession, so infinite and eternal the consequences of their obedience or disobedience of the words of my text, “Take thee a great roll and write in it with a man’s pen,” and so many are the surrounding temptations, that the men of no other profession more deeply need the defenses and the reinforcements of the grace of God.

THE OPPORTUNITIES OF JOURNALISM.

And then look at the opportunities of journalism. I praise the pulpit and magnify my office, but I state a fact which you all know when I say that where the pulpit touches one person the press touches five hundred. The vast majority of people do not go to church, but all intelligent people read the newspapers. While, therefore, the responsibility of the minister is great, the responsibilities of editors and reporters is greater. Come, brother journalist, and get your ordination, not by the laying on of human hands, but by the laying on of the hands of the Almighty. To you is committed the precious reputation of men and the more precious reputation of women. Spread before our children an elevated literature. Make sin appear disgusting and virtue admirable. Believe good rather than evil. While you show up the hypocrisies of the church, show up the stupendous hypocrisies outside of the church. Be not, as some of you are, 435the mere echoes of public opinion; make public opinion. Let the great roll on which you write with a man’s pen be a message of light and liberty, and kindness and an awakening of moral power. But who is sufficient for these things! Not one of you without Divine help. But get that influence and the editors and reporters can go up and take this world for God and the truth. The mightiest opportunity in all the world for usefulness to-day is open before editors and reporters and publishers, whether of knowledge on foot, as in the book, or knowledge on the wing, as in the newspaper; I pray God, men of the newspaper press, whether you hear or read this sermon, that you may rise up to your full opportunity and that you may be divinely helped and rescued and blessed.

Some one might say to me: “How can you talk thus of the newspaper press when you yourself have sometimes been unfairly treated and misrepresented?” I answer that in the opportunity the newspaper press of this country and other countries have given me week by week to preach the gospel to the nations, I am put under so much obligation that I defy all editors and reporters, the world over, to write anything that shall call forth from me one word of bitter retort from now till the day of my death. My opinion is that all reformers and religious teachers, instead of spending so much time and energy in denouncing the press, had better spend more time in thanking them for what they have done for the world’s intelligence, and declaring their magnificent opportunity and urging their employment of it all for beneficent and righteous purposes.

A TYPE OF CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM.

Again, I remark that Henry W. Grady stood for Christian patriotism irrespective of political spoils. He declined all official reward. He could have been Governor of Georgia, but refused it. He could have been Senator of the United States, but declined it. He remained plain Henry Grady. Nearly all the other orators of the political arena, as soon as the elections are over, go to 436Washington, or Albany, or Harrisburg, or Atlanta, to get in city or state or national office, reward for their services, and not getting what they want spend the rest of the time of that administration in pouting about the management of public affairs or cursing Harrison or Cleveland. When the great political campaigns were over Mr. Grady went home to his newspaper. He demonstrated that it is possible to toil for principles which he thought to be right, simply because they were right. Christian patriotism is too rare a commodity in this country. Surely the joy of living under such free institutions as those established here ought to be enough reward for political fidelity. Among all the great writers that stood at the last Presidential election on Democratic and Republican platforms, you cannot recall in your mind ten who were not themselves looking for remunerative appointments. Aye, you can count them all on the fingers of one hand. The most illustrious specimen of that style of man for the last ten years was Henry W. Grady.

Again, Mr. Grady stood for the New South, and was just what we want to meet three other men, one to speak for the New North, another for the New East, and another for the New West. The bravest speech made for the last quarter of a century was that made by Mr. Grady at the New England dinner in New York about two or three years ago. I sat with him that evening and know something of his anxieties, for he was to tread on dangerous ground, and might by one misspoken word have antagonized both sections. His speech was a victory that thrilled all of us who heard him and all who read him. That speech, great for wisdom, great for kindness, great for pacification, great for bravery, will go down to the generations with Webster’s speech at Bunker Hill, William Wirt’s speech at the arraignment of Aaron Burr, Edmund Burke’s speech on Warren Hastings, Robert Emmett’s speech for his own vindication.

Who will in conspicuous action represent the New North as he did the New South? Who will come forth 437for the New East and who for the New West? Let old political issues be buried, let old grudges die. Let new theories be launched. With the coming in of a new nation at the gates of Castle Garden every year, and the wheat bin and corn crib of our land enlarged with every harvest, and a vast multitude of our population still plunged in illiteracy to be educated, and moral questions abroad involving the very existence of our Republic, let the old political platforms that are worm-eaten be dropped, and platforms that shall be made of two planks, the one the Ten Commandments, and the other the Sermon on the Mount, lifted for all of us to stand on. But there is a lot of old politicians grumbling all around the sky who don’t want a New South, a New North, a New East, or a New West. They have some old war speeches that they prepared in 1861, that in all our autumnal elections they feel called upon to inflict upon the country. They growl louder and louder in proportion as they are pushed back further and further and the Henry W. Gradys come to the front. But the mandate, I think, has gone forth from the throne of God that a new American Nation shall take the place of the old, and the new has been baptized for God and liberty, and justice and peace and morality and religion.

THE APOTHEOSIS.

And now our much lamented friend has gone to give account. Suddenly the facile and potent pen is laid down and the eloquent tongue is silent. What? Is there no safeguard against fatal disease? The impersonation of stout health was Mr. Grady. What compactness of muscle! What ruddy complexion! What flashing eye! Standing with him in a group of twenty or thirty persons at Piedmont, he looked the healthiest, as his spirits were the blithest. Shall we never feel again the hearty grasp of his hand or be magnetized with his eloquence? Men of the great roll, men of the pen, men of wit, men of power, if our friend had to go when the call came, so must you when your call comes. When God asks you what have 438you done with your pen, or your eloquence, or your wealth, or your social position, will you be able to give satisfactory answer? What have we been writing all these years? If mirth, has it been innocent mirth, or that which tears and stings and lacerates? From our pen have there come forth productions healthy or poisonous! In the last great day, when the warrior must give account of what he has done with his sword, and the merchant what he has done with his yard stick, and the mason what he has done with his trowel, and the artist what he has done with his pencil, we shall have to give account of what we have done with our pen. There are gold pens and diamond pens, and pens of exquisite manufacture, and every few weeks I see some new kind of pen, each said to be better than the other; but in the great day of our arraignment before the Judge of the quick and dead, that will be the most beautiful pen, whether gold or steel or quill, which never wrote a profane or unclean or cruel word, or which from the day it was carved or split at the nib, dropped from its point kindness and encouragement, and help and gratitude to God and benediction for man.

May God comfort that torn up Southern home, and all the homes of this country, and of all the world, which have been swept by this plague of influenza, which has deepened sometimes into pneumonia and sometimes into typhus, and the victims of which are counted by the ten thousand, Satan, who is the “prince of the power of the air,” has been poisoning the atmosphere in all nations. Though it is the first time in our remembrance, he has done the same thing before. In 1696 the unwholesome air of Cairo, Egypt, destroyed the life of ten thousand in one day, and in Constantinople in 1714 three hundred thousand people died of it. I am glad that by the better sanitation of our cities and wider understanding of hygienic laws and the greater skill of physicians these Apollyonic assaults upon the human race are being resisted, but pestilential atmosphere is still abroad. Hardly a family here but has felt its lighter or heavier touch. Some of the best of my flock fell under its 439power and many homes here represented have been crushed. The fact is the biggest failure in the universe is this world, if there be no heaven beyond. But there is, and the friends who have gone there are many, and very dear. Oh, tearful eyes, look up to the hills crimsoning with eternal morn! That reunion kiss will more than make up for the parting kiss, and the welcome will obliterate the good-by. “The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” Till then, O departed loved ones, promise us that you will remember us, as we promise to remember you. And some of you gone up from this city by the sea, and others from under southern skies and others from the homes of the more rigorous North and some from the cabins on great western farms, we shall meet again when our pen has written its last word and our arm has done its last day’s work and our lips have spoken their last adieu.

And now, thou great and magnificent soul of editor and orator! under brighter skies we shall meet again. From God thou camest, and to God thou hast returned. Not broken down, but ascended. Not collapsed, but irradiated. Enthroned one! Coroneted one! Sceptered one! Emparadised one! Hail and farewell!

441TRIBUTES

OF THE

NORTHERN PRESS.

443

HE WAS THE EMBODIMENT OF THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW SOUTH.

From the “New York World.”

AS the soldier falls upon the battle-field in the line of duty, so died Henry Woodfin Grady, the progressive editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Mr. Grady came to the North twelve days ago, with his fatal illness upon him, against the entreaties of his family, to speak a word for the South, to the mind and conscience of New England. He performed his task in splendid spirit, and with the effective and moving eloquence that were always his, and then returned home to die. It is highly probable that if he had not gone to Boston he would be living and writing to-day. It is as more than a journalist or an orator, that Mr. Grady is to be counted. He was admirable as both, but he was more than a Southerner, a peacemaker between the sections. He was intensely Southern, filled full of all the traditions of his people, proud of them and their past, but he accepted the new order with the magnificent enthusiasm of his intense nature, and became the embodiment of the spirit of the New South. More than any other man of this section, he had the ear of the people of the North. They believed the patriotic assurances which he made in behalf of his people, because they knew him to be honest and sincere and thoroughly devoted to all that makes for the best in public affairs. His influence in Atlanta and throughout the South was deservedly great. No Southerner could have been so ill-spared as this young man, whose future only a day or two ago seemed brilliant to a degree. His death is a wonderfully great bereavement, and not only to his family and the community in which he lived and labored, but the whole country, whose peace and unity and kindly sentiment he did so much to promote.

444

A THOROUGHLY AMERICAN JOURNALIST.

From the “New York Herald.”

Mr. Grady’s death will be deeply and justly regretted all over the country. He had, though still a young man, made for himself a national reputation, and by his steadfast counsels for peace and good will, and by his intelligent devotion to the development of his State and of the South, had won the good will of North and South alike.

It is seldom that so good a journalist is at the same time so brilliant and effective an orator as Mr. Grady was. The reason probably is that when he spoke he had something to say, and that he was of so cheerful and hopeful a spirit that he was able to affect his hearers with his own optimism. In that he was a thorough American, for, as one of the shrewdest New Yorkers once said, “This is a bull country, and the bears have the wrong philosophy for the American people.”

For that training which made him not only a brilliant and successful, but, what is better, a broadly intelligent and useful journalist, the Herald claims a not inconsiderable share of credit, which Mr. Grady himself was accustomed to give it. The Herald was his early and best school. As a correspondent of this journal he first made his mark by the fearless accuracy of his reports of some exciting scenes in the reconstruction period. He showed in those days so keen an eye as an observer, united with such rapid and just judgment of the bearings of facts, that his reports in the Herald attracted general attention and were recognized freely, even by those whom they inconvenienced, as the clearest, the most truthful, and the most just reports 445made of those events. He was then still a very young man; but he quickly saw that the province of a newspaper, and of a reporter of events for it, is to tell the exact truth, to tell it simply and straightforwardly, and without fear, favor or prejudice. This is what he learned from his connection with the Herald, and this lesson he carried into his own able journal, the Atlanta Constitution.

It does not often happen that so young a man as Mr. Grady was makes so great and widespread a reputation, and this without any of the tricks of self-puffery which are the cheap resort of too many young men ambitious of fame, or what they mistake for fame—notoriety.

In Mr. Grady’s untimely death the country loses one of its foremost and most clear-headed journalists, and his State one of its most eminent and justly admired citizens.

A LOSS TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY.

From the “New York Tribune.”

The death of Henry Grady is a loss to the whole country, but there is some consolation in the general recognition of this fact. During his brief career as a public man he has said many things that it was profitable for both North and South to hear, and he has said them in such a way as to enhance their significance. As editor of one of the few widely influential papers of the South, he possessed an opportunity, which he had also in great measure created, of impressing his opinions upon Southern society, but it was to a few occasional addresses in Northern cities that he chiefly owed his national reputation. His rhetorical gifts were not of the highest order, but he had command of a style of speaking which was most effective for his purposes. It was marked by the Celtic characteristic of exuberance, but it was so agreeable and inspiring that he was able to 446command at will audiences at home and abroad. When so endowed he has also a significant message to deliver, and is, moreover, animated by a sincere desire to serve his generation to the full measure of his ability, the loss which his death inflicts is not easily repaired. The whole country will unite in deploring the sudden extinction of a faithful life. Mr. Grady’s zeal, activity and patriotism were fully recognized in the North, as we have said, but yet it was pre-eminently to his own people that he was an example and inspiration. His loyalty to the cause in which his father fell was untinged with bitterness, and he never permitted himself to imagine that vain regrets were more sacred than present obligations. He was an admirable illustration of that sagacious and progressive spirit which is gradually, but surely, renewing the South, and which, though it still lacks something of being altogether equal to its opportunities, does nevertheless recognize the fact that “new occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.”

WHAT HENRY W. GRADY REPRESENTED.

From the “New York Commercial Advertiser.”

What undoubtedly interested and fascinated people most in the late Henry W. Grady was the fact that he represented an order of genius now almost extinct in our country, and yet one in which some of the favorite episodes of its history are entwined. The orator who appealed at once to the reason and the feelings was beyond question the foremost power of our early national century of history. He was not predominant in the councils which founded our government, nor in the first decade of its administration; because the duties of that period called for the calm deliberations of statesmen rather than the arousing of voters to action. As this era of national infancy drew to its close, 447and the gigantic problems, destined at a later day to involve the nation in civil war, came forth into sudden prominence, the orator became the central figure of the national stage. The rank and file gave their allegiance to their chosen oratorical leader. He spoke in their behalf in Congress; he defined in all political gatherings the will and purposes of his constituents; and not less powerfully was his influence exerted to shape those opinions and purposes. Indeed, the speeches of Clay, Calhoun and Webster, and at a later day of Douglas and Lincoln, are better understood when regarded as shaping public opinion than as following the popular will already formed. The speeches of these leaders supplied the need which is now met by the newspaper editorial in journals of influence and public spirit. Like the newspaper of this later day, the American orator of half a century ago was quick to note a change in the trend of public sentiment, and at his best fearless in leading the movement even before the popular mind had given assent.

The civil war brought to a close the epoch in which flourished this interesting and impressive figure of our earlier politics. To-day, partly because of the greater diffusion of news and intelligence, partly by reason of the more technical and analytical character of the national problems which confront us, he has quite disappeared from the political stage. One need only recall the congressional or campaign speeches of our ablest public speakers to appreciate the truth of this. It was Mr. Grady’s good fortune that he, equipped with the keen insight and fervid eloquence of our old public leaders, was placed in an epoch and a community where the reconciling of the North and the South called for just these powers. Presently, when the wave of closer commercial intercourse and the better mutual understanding shall have swept with unprecedented rapidity over the whole nation, the feelings which made such mediation necessary will be quite dead. But the work of the men who led the way is not likely to be forgotten.

448

A FAR-SIGHTED STATESMAN.

From the “New York Star.”

The death of Henry W. Grady is a very much greater national loss than the public will at first concede; and while his death will be regretted, not only by the Democracy of the country, but by all patriotic citizens, few will recognize that he was one of the few prominent young men, who were children during the War, who labored to obliterate absolutely the animosity it engendered. We believe that if the circumstance of his prominent position had not silenced Jefferson Davis, who died almost simultaneously with this youth, he, too, would have been found advocating the truth that the Union of these States is homogeneous, and that Union is worth all the sacrifices it cost.

The young Atlanta editor has, during the past few years, done as much as any other public man toward the accomplishment of perfect reunion and for the prosperity of his State and section. His later addresses had been specially characterized by a broad grasp of political and industrial problems that entitled him to high rank as an accomplished and far-sighted statesman.

There have been few more interesting personalities in the life of the country in the past decade, and there was no man of his years with brighter prospects than Grady at the time of his last visit to the North, which will be memorable as the occasion of his most comprehensive and effective address on his constant theme of American prosperity through fraternity.

AN APOSTLE OF THE NEW FAITH.

From the “New York Times.”

Few men who have never entered the public service were more widely known throughout the country than Henry W. Grady, who died at Atlanta, and the death of only 449a few even of those who have won the honors and the prominence of public life would be more sincerely deplored. Ten years ago Mr. Grady had made himself known in the South by the fervency of his devotion to her interests and by the unusual ability he displayed in his newspaper work, and the people of the South met his devotion with characteristic warmth of affection and generosity of praise. A little later he was recognized in the North as an eloquent interpreter of the new spirit which had awakened and possessed the South. His speech at the dinner of the New England Society three years ago was only an expression from a more conspicuous platform of the sentiments which had long inspired his daily writing. And it was not merely as an interpreter of Southern feeling that Mr. Grady was entitled to recognition. In a large measure he was the creator of the spirit that now animates the South. He was an apostle of the new faith. He exhorted the people of the Southern States to concern themselves no longer about what they had lost, but to busy themselves with what they might find to do, to consecrate the memories of the war if they would, but to put the whole strength of their minds and bodies into the building up of the New South. To his teaching and his example, as much as to any other single influence perhaps, the South owes the impulses of material advancement, of downright hard work, and that well-nigh complete reconciliation to the conditions and duties of the present and the future that distinguish her to-day.

THE FOREMOST LEADER.

From the “New York Christian Union.”

The death of Henry W. Grady, at Atlanta, on Monday of this week, was a loss, not only to his own section, but to the country. Although a young man, and not in political life, Mr. Grady had already acquired a national reputation. It is only three years since he delivered the speech at the New England dinner in this city, which gave a sudden 450expansion to a reputation already rapidly extending, and made his name known in every State in the Union. Mr. Grady was a typical Southern man, ardent in his love for his own section, loyal to the memory of those who fought in the struggle of a quarter of a century ago, but equally loyal to the duties and the nation of to-day. Warm-hearted, generous, and of a fervid imagination, Mr. Grady’s oratory recalled the best traditions of the Southern style; and the sincerity and geniality of his nature evoked the confidence and regard of his audience, while his eloquence thrilled them. His latest speech was delivered in Boston two weeks ago, on the race question, and was one of those rare addresses which carry with them an immediate broadening of the views of every auditor. Among the men of his own section Mr. Grady was probably the foremost leader of progressive ideas, and his death becomes for that reason a national loss.

A GLORIOUS MISSION.

From the Albany, N.Y., “Argus.”

All who admire true patriotism, brilliant talents, golden eloquence and ripe judgment, will regret the untimely taking off of the gifted Southern journalist and orator, Henry W. Grady, in the very zenith of his powers and fame. His eloquent address at the annual banquet of the Boston Merchants’ Association is still fresh in the minds of those who listened to him or read his glowing words in the columns of the press. It was the last and grandest effort of the brilliant young Southerner. It was the defense of his beloved South against the calumnies cast upon her, and the most lucid, convincing exposition of the race question ever presented at a public assemblage. Impassioned and heartfelt was his plea for Union and the abandonment of all sectionalism. These closing words of 451his address might fitly be inscribed upon his tomb: “Let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic, compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill—serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory—blazing out the path, and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God’s appointed time.” The words were all the more emphatic and convincing because they were spoken in the presence of an ex-president whose entire administration had been consecrated to such a Union of all sections, and who accomplished more in the grand work of obliterating the last traces of sectional strife and division than any other man who sat in the national executive chair.

Well may the South mourn over this fervid advocate of her honor, her rights, her interests, and regard his death a public calamity. Eloquence such as his is rarely given to men, and it was devoted wholly to his beloved land. It has done more to break down the barriers of prejudice and passion than a decade of homilies, dry arguments and elaborate statistics could effect. His was a most glorious mission, the bringing together in the closest bonds of fraternal love and confidence the sections which partisan malice, political selfishness and unconscionable malignity would keep apart. Whenever he spoke, the earnestness of his convictions, expressed in the noblest language, impressed itself upon the intelligence of his hearers. His last appeal, made, as he described it, “within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill, where Webster thundered and Longfellow sang, and Emerson thought and Channing preached,” melted away the most hardened prejudice and enkindled in the New England heart the spirit of respect and sympathy for the brave, single-minded people of the South, who are so patiently and determinedly working out their destiny to make their beautiful land the abode of unalloyed peace and prosperity. Journalism will also mourn the loss of one of its brightest representatives. 452Henry W. Grady shone in the columns of his newspaper, the Atlanta Constitution, with no less brilliancy than he did as an orator. Under his guidance that paper has become one of the brightest in the land. It will be difficult for the South to supply his place as patriot, journalist and orator. He was an effective foil to the Eliza Pinkston class of statesmen in and out of Congress.

HIS LOFTY IDEAL.

From the “Philadelphia Press.”

Few men die at thirty-eight whose departure is felt as a national loss, but Henry W. Grady was one. At an age when most men are just beginning to be known in their own States and to be recognized in their own section, he was known to the nation and recognized by the American people. At the South he represented the new pride in the material revival of a section desolated by the war. At the North he stood for loyal and enthusiastic support by the South of the new claims of the Union. His every appearance before the public was one more proof to the nation that the sons of those who fought the war were again one people and under one flag, cherishing different memories in the past, but pressing forward to the same lofty ideal of a homogeneous democratic society under republican institutions.

If Henry W. Grady spoke at the North he spoke for the South; if he spoke at the South he stood for Northern ideas in his own land. He was none the less true in both attitudes that his utterances were insensibly modified by his audiences. Eloquent, magnetic, impressionable, sharing to the full the sympathy every great speaker always has with his audience, his sentiment swung from extreme to extreme as he stood on a Northern or a Southern platform. It was always easy to pick flaws in them. Now and then 453his rhetorical sympathies placed him in a false position. But it was the inevitable condition of work like his that he should express extremes. If he had not felt and voiced the pride with which every Southerner must and should look back to the deathless valor of men we all rejoice to claim as Americans, he would have been worthless as a representative of the South. If he had not thrilled earlier than his fellows to the splendid national heritage with which defeat had dowered his people, he could never have awakened the applause of Northern audiences by expressions of loyalty and devotion to our common nation.

This service to both sections sprang from something more than sympathy. A moral courage Northern men can little understand was needed for him to oppose Southern treatment of the negro. Energy and industry, unknown among his fellows, were needed in the leadership he undertook in the material development of his State and section. It is easy now to see the enormous profit which lay in the material development of Georgia. Far-sighted provision was needed to urge the policy and aid the combination which made it possible ten years ago.

No one but a journalist, we are proud to say, could have done Mr. Grady’s work, and he brought to the work of journalism some of its highest qualifications. Ability as a writer, keen appreciation of “news,” and tireless industry, which he had, must all be held second to the power he possessed in an eminent degree of divining the drift and tendency of public feeling, being neither too early to lead it nor too late to control it. This divination Mr. Grady was daily displaying and he never made better use of it than in his last speech in Boston, the best of his life, in which he rose from mere rhetoric to a clear, earnest and convincing handling of fact. A great future was before him, all too soon cut off. He leaves to all journalists the inspiring example of the great opportunities which their profession offers to serve the progress of men and aid the advance of nations, by speaking to the present of the bright and radiant light of the future, and rising above the 454claims of party and the prejudice of locality to advocate the higher claims of patriotism and humanity.

HIS PATRIOTISM.

From the “Philadelphia Ledger.”

The death of Henry W. Grady, which occurred almost at the dawning of this beneficent Christmas time, did not “eclipse the gayety of nations,” as it was long ago said the death of another illustrious person did, but it still casts a shadow over his native land—a shadow which falls heavily upon all those of his countrymen who knew, honored and loved the man.

Henry W. Grady was one of the youngest, the most brilliant, the best beloved of the young men of his country who, since the war of secession, won distinction in public life. Whether considered as a writer or an orator, his talents were extraordinary. His language was strong, refined, and, in its poetic warmth and elegance, singularly beautiful. But that which gave to it its greatest value and charm was the wisdom of the thought, the sincerity of the high conscience of which it was the expression. It was given to him as it is to so few—the ability to wed noble thoughts to noble words—to make the pen more convincing than the sword in argument, to make the tongue proclaim “the Veritas that lurks beneath the letter’s unprolific sheath.”

Henry W. Grady was, in the truest sense, an American; his love of country, his unselfish devotion to it, were unquestioned and unquestionable; but he sought to serve it best by best serving the South, which he so greatly loved and which so loved and honored him. It was the New South of human freedom, material progress—not the Old South of chattel slavery and material sluggishness—of which he was the representative, the prophet. It was the South of to-day, 455which has put off the bitternesses, defeats and animosities of the war; which has put on the sentient spirit of real union, of marvelous physical development, which advances day by day to wealth, dignity and greatness by gigantic strides. This was the South that he glorified with pen and tongue, and which he sought with earnest, zealous love to bring into closer, warmer fraternity with the North and the North with it.

The story of the shield which hung in the forest, and which, to the traveler coming from the North, seemed to be made of gold, and to the traveler journeying from the South, to be made of silver, is an old one. But it has its new significance in every great matter to which there are two sides, and which is looked at by those approaching it from different directions from their respective points of view. He saw but one side of the race question—the Southern side, and for that he strenuously contended only a few days before his death, in the very shadow of Faneuil Hall, or, as he finely said: “Here, within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill—where Webster thundered and Longfellow sang, Emerson thought and Channing preached—here, in the cradle of American letters and of American liberty.” It was in the house of his antagonists that he fought for the side which he thought good and just, and if in doing so he did not convince, he was listened to with respect and admiration.

That is a question not to be discussed here and now, and it is referred to only to show the courage of Mr. Grady in defence of his convictions, for they were convictions, and honest ones, and not mere political or sectional opinions. Apart from the race question, Mr. Grady was a man of peace, who, whether writing in his own influential journal in the South, or speaking in Boston, his tongue and voice were alike for peace, good will, unity of interest, thought and feeling. In his address of the 13th instant, at the Boston banquet, Mr. Grady said:

“A mighty duty, sir, a mighty inspiration impels every one of us to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever 456estranges, whatever divides. We, sir, are Americans, and we stand for human liberty! The uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth. France, Brazil—these are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression, this is our mission! And we shall not fail. God has sown in our soil the seed of His millennial harvest, and He will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until His full and perfect day has come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way—aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day—when the Old World will come to marvel and to learn, amid our gathered treasures—let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a republic, compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill—serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory—blazing out the path and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God’s appointed time.”

The fine expression of these lofty sentiments shows the eloquence of the man, but, better than that, they themselves show the broad and noble spirit of his patriotism. And the man that his countrymen so admired and honored is dead, his usefulness ended, his voice silent, his pen idle forever, and he so young. There are no accidents, said Charles Sumner, in the economy of Providence; nor are there. The death of Henry W. Grady, which seems so premature, is yet part of the inscrutable design the perfectness of which may not be questioned, and out of it good will come which is now hidden. He was of those great spirits of whom Lowell sang:

“We find in our dull road their shining track;

In every noble mood

We feel the Orient of their spirit glow,

Part of our life’s unalterable good,

Of all our saintlier aspirations!”

457He was of those who even through death do good, and so posthumously work out the economy of Providence, for

“As thrills of long-hushed tone

Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine

With keen vibrations from the touch divine

Of Nobler natures gone.”

ORATORY AND THE PRESS.

From the “Boston Advertiser.”

The lamented death of Mr. H. W. Grady affords a fit occasion for saying that oratory is not one of “the lost arts.” A great deal is said from time to time about the decadence of oratory as caused by the competition of the press. We are told that public address is held in slight esteem because the public prints are much more accessible and equally interesting. It is said that this operates in two ways, that the man who has something to say will always prefer to write rather than speak, because the printed page reaches tens of thousands, while the human voice can at most be heard by a few hundreds, and that not many people will take the trouble to attend a lecture when they can read discussions of the same subject by the lecturer himself, or others equally competent, without stirring from the evening lamp or exchanging slippers for boots. But there is a great deal of fallacy in such arguments. The press is the ally, not the supplanter of the platform. The functions of the two are so distinct that they cannot clash, yet so related that they are mutually helpful. Oratory is very much more than the vocal utterance, of fitting words. One of the ancients defined the three requisites of an orator as first, action; second, action; and third, action. If by action is meant all that accompanies speech, as gesture, emphasis, intonation, variety in time, and those subtle expressions that come through the flushing cheek and the 458gleaming eye, the enumeration was complete. Mr. Grady spoke with his lips not only, but with every form and feature of his bodily presence. Such oratory as his, and such as that of the man whose lecture on “The Lost Arts” proved that oratory is not one of them, will never be out of date while human nature remains what it is. There is, indeed, one class of public speakers whose occupation the press has nearly taken away. They are the “orators,” falsely so called, whose speech is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Cold type is fatal to their pretensions.

THE LESSON OF MR. GRADY’S LIFE.

From the “Philadelphia Times.”

Henry W. Grady is dead, but the lesson of his life will live and bear fruits for years to come. The young men of the South will not fail to note that the public journals of every faith in the North have discussed his life and death in the sincerest sympathy, and that not only his ability but his candor and courage have elicited universal commendation. Had Mr. Grady been anything less than a sincere Southerner in sympathy and conviction, he could have commanded the regulation praise of party organs in political conflicts, but he would have died little regretted in either section. He was a true son of the South; faithful to its interests, to its convictions, to its traditions; and he proved how plain was the way for the honest Southerner to be an honest patriot and a devoted supporter of the Union.

There are scores of men in the South, or who have lived there, and who have filled the highest public trusts within the gifts of their States, without commanding the sympathy or respect of any section of the country. Of the South, they were not in sympathy with their people or interests, and they have played their brief and accidental 459parts only to be forgotten when their work was done. They did not speak for the South; they were instruments of discord rather than of tranquility, and they left no impress upon the convictions or pulsations of either section.

But Mr. Grady was a true, able, candid, courageous son of the South, and he was as much respected under the shadows of Bunker Hill as in Georgia. Sincerely Southern in every sympathy, he was welcomed North and South as a patriot; and long after the Mahones and the Chalmers shall have been charitably forgotten, the name of Grady will be fresh in the greenest memories of the whole people of the country.

There is no better lesson for the young men of the South to study than the life, the aims and the efforts of Mr. Grady and the universal gratitude he commanded from every section. He was beloved in the South, where his noble qualities were commonly known, but he was respected in the North as an honest Southerner, who knew how to be true to his birthright and true to the Republic. The Northern press of every shade of political conviction has united in generous tribute to the young patriot of Georgia, and if his death shall widen and deepen the appreciation of his achievement among the young men of the South who must soon be the actors of the day, he may yet teach even more eloquently and successfully in the dreamless sleep of the grave than his matchless oratory ever taught in Atlanta or Boston.

HIS LOSS A GENERAL CALAMITY.

Front the “St. Louis Globe-Democrat.”

The sudden and lamentable death of Henry W. Grady will eclipse the gayety of the Christmas season in the South. He was a popular favorite throughout that section, and his loss is a general calamity. His public career was yet in its 460beginning. He had distinguished himself as an editor and as an orator, and high political honors awaited him quite as a matter of course. His qualities of head and heart fitted him admirably for the service of the people, and they trusted and loved him as they did no other of the younger Southern leaders. He believed in the new order of things, and was anxious to see the South redeemed from the blunders and superstitions of the past, and started on a career of rational and substantial progress. In the nature of things, he was obliged now and then to humor sectional prejudice, but he did it always in a graceful way, and set an example of moderation and good temper that was greatly to his credit. Without sacrificing in the least his honor or his sincerity as a devoted son of the South, he gave candid and appreciative recognition to the virtues of the North, and made himself at home in Boston the same as in Atlanta. The war was over with him in the best sense. He looked to the future, and all his aspirations were generous and wholesome.

If the political affairs of the South were in the control of men of the Grady pattern, a vast improvement would soon be made. He did not hesitate to denounce the methods which have so often brought deserved reproach upon the Southern people. He was not in sympathy with the theory that violence and fraud may be properly invoked to decide elections and shape the course of legislation. His impulses as a partisan stopped short of the feeling that everything is fair in politics. He did much to mollify and elevate the tone of public sentiment; and he would have done a great deal more if he had been spared to continue his salutary work. His loss is one of that kind which makes the decrees of fate so hard to understand. There was every reason why he should live and prosper. His opportunities of usefulness were abundant; his State and his country needed him; there was certain distinction in store for him. Under such circumstances death comes not as a logical result, but as an arbitrary interference with reasonable conditions and conceptions. We are bound to 461believe that the mystery has been made plain to the man himself; but here it is insoluble. The lesson of his sterling integrity, his patriotism and his cheerfulness is left, however, for his countrymen to study and enforce. Let us hope that in the South particularly it will not be neglected.

SADDEST OF SEQUELS.

From the “Manchester, N.H., Union.”

The death of Henry W. Grady, the brilliant journalist and eloquent orator, will be sincerely deplored throughout the country. It is especially untimely, coming as it does as the saddest of sequels to a tour which promised much in the beginning, and which, in all save this ending, more than fulfilled the expectations of his friends. His brilliant speech in Boston was his last great effort, and it will long be remembered as one of his best. In it he plead, as it now proves, with the lips of a dying man, for true fraternity between the North and South. Had he lived, his burning appeals would have moved the country deeply. Now that it is known that the effort cost him his life, his words will have a touch of pathos in them as they are recalled by the men of all parties and all sections to whom they were so earnestly addressed. But even this increased effect given to his last appeal to the North will not compensate for the loss of such a man at this time. Henry W. Grady was distinctively the representative of the New South. Too young to have had an active part in the great struggle between the states, he came into active life at just the time when men like him were needed. His face was set toward the future. He belonged to and was identified with the progressive element which has already accomplished so much of positive achievement in the Southern States. He was a Southern man, recognized as a leader by Southern men, but with a breadth of mind and purpose which made 462him a part of the entire country. Under his leadership the South was sure to make progress, but its rapid march was to be to the music of the Union, and with every step the North and South were to be nearer together than at any previous time since the adoption of the Constitution. But his part in the great work is ended. His passionate voice is stilled and his active brain is at rest at a time in life when most men are entering upon their most effective work. Had he lived, a brilliant future was already assured to him, a future of leadership and of tremendous influence in public affairs. But his untimely death ends all. Others will take up his work as best they may; the New South will go forward with the development of its material interests, old animosities will fade away and the North and South will gradually come together in harmony of spirit and purpose, but the man of all others who seemed destined to lead in the great movement will have no further share in it. The South will mourn his early death most deeply, and the North will throw off its reserve sufficiently to extend its sincere sympathy, feeling that when such a man dies the loss is the nation’s rather than that of a single state or of a group of states.

A LIFE OF PROMISE.

From the “Chicago Inter-Ocean.”

In the death of Henry W. Grady, which occurred yesterday, journalism, the South, and the whole country suffered serious loss. He had come to occupy a large place, and one which cannot be filled. He was a connecting link between the old and the new South, with his face toward the East, albeit the shadows of the setting sun could be clearly discerned in his discussions of the vital questions of the day. His life seemed just begun, and big in the promise of usefulness. Two years ago he was known only 463as a journalist. He addressed the New England Society of New York on the evening of December 29, 1887. That speech made him famous. Since then his name has been a household word. For him to be stricken down at the early age of thirty-nine is little if any short of a public calamity.

It is a dangerous thing for a man of serious purpose to win renown as an after-dinner speaker. Post-prandial oratory is generally a kind of champagne, as effervescent as it is sparkling, but Mr. Grady struck a vein of thought at that New England banquet which had in it all the earnestness of patriotism. A Southerner with a strong sectional flavor, his influence, as a whole, was broadening. He never rose superior to the prejudice of race, but it may well be doubted if any Southerner could do so in these days without cutting himself off from all influence over his own people. There is nowhere visible in the Southern heavens the dawn of the day of equal justice, irrespective of race. In that regard Mr. Grady was neither better nor worse than his white neighbors. But with that exception his patriotism had largely outgrown its provincial environments.

Mr. Grady was a native of Georgia. His father seems to have been a follower of Alex. H. Stephens, for he was a Union man until the final test came, when he took up arms for the Confederacy, meeting death for the cause of his reluctant espousal. A graduate of the University of Georgia and later of the University of Virginia, the son had the best education the South could give. His newspaper life began early and was never interrupted. For several years he was co-editor and co-proprietor of the Atlanta Constitution, confessedly one of the leading newspapers of the country. Previous to his connection with the Constitution he was the correspondent of the Inter-Ocean and the New York Herald. Both as editor and correspondent he excelled. Both as editor and orator he has at different times spoken eloquently of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis his point of view being intermediate, and that fact, rather 464than any conscious vacillation, explains his seeming contradictions.

A few days ago the Southern people stood with uncovered heads by the grave of Jefferson Davis, the most conspicuous representative of the Old South, and now, before they had fairly returned from that funeral, they are called upon to attend the obsequies of the most conspicuous representative of the New South. These two notable men present much the same blending of resemblance and contrast, as do the evening and the morning stars. Certainly Mr. Grady, young, enthusiastic, and patriotic, was to the South a harbinger of brighter, more prosperous days.

ELECTRIFIED THE WHOLE COUNTRY.

From the “Pittsburgh Dispatch.”

The Christmas holidays, North and South, are saddened by the death of Henry W. Grady, the interesting young journalist of Atlanta, whose words of patriotism and of manly hope and encouragement for all sections, have more than once within a few years electrified the whole country. Mr. Grady won fame early, and in an uncommon manner. Though locally known in the South as a capable newspaper man, his name was not familiar to the general public until a few years ago, when, by a single speech at a banquet in a northern city, he attracted universal attention. Since then his utterances have carried weight, and scarcely a man speaking or writing on public topics has been more respectfully heard.

The key-note of Mr. Grady’s speeches on the South was that the past belief of its people in the “Lost Cause,” and their continued personal admiration for their leaders, should not and did not prevent them from accepting fully and in perfect good faith the results as they stand. He argued that the best elements, including the new generation, 465were only too willing and anxious to treat of the past as a condition wholly and irrevocably past—and, at that, a past which they would not recall if they could. From the North he asked a recognition of this new feeling, and the magnanimous consideration which would not assume that the South was still disloyal or rebellious merely because it refused to condemn itself and its leaders for the mistakes which brought it disaster.

The efforts of the deceased were to promote patriotic devotion to the Union in the South, and to induce the North to believe that the feeling existed. His evident sincerity and his eloquence in presenting the situation won cordial approval in the North, while in his own section he was applauded with equal warmth. His death will be very widely and deeply regretted, as that of a man of high and generous feeling whose influence, had he lived, promised to make for whatever was noble and good.

A LARGE BRAIN AND A LARGE HEART.

From the “Elmira, N.Y., Advertiser.”

Throughout the entire North as well as in the South will there be heartfelt and sincere mourning over the death of this most distinguished editor on the other side of Mason and Dixon’s line. It was only ten days ago that he came North and delivered an address at the annual dinner of the Merchant’s Club of Boston, following it on the next evening with a speech before the Bay State Club, a Democratic organization. While on this trip Mr. Grady contracted a severe cold which was the immediate cause of his death yesterday morning.

The dead editor was a man of large brain and large heart. His hope was in the future of the South and he worked for the results which his prophetic ken perceived ahead of its present with great earnestness and great judgment. 466Since he became the editor of the Atlanta Constitution he has labored unceasingly to remedy the unfortunate conditions which operated against the progress and development of the South. Under his inspiring leadership and wise counsel many enterprises have been started and encouraged. There is no other one man to whom the New South owes so much as to Henry W. Grady. When he came to New York City two years ago, and in a notable address there told the people what this New South had done and was trying to do, the public was astonished at his statistics. The speech was so eloquent, so earnest, so broadly American in tone and spirit that it attracted wide attention and sent a thrill of admiration to the heart of every gratified reader. It made him not only famous but popular all through the North. This fame and popularity were increased by his recent excellent addresses in Boston. The Advertiser published, on Thursday last, on the fourth page, an extract from one of these speeches, entitled “The Hope of the Republic,” and we can do the dead man no better honor than to recommend to our readers that they turn back and read that extract again. It expresses the purest sentiment and highest appreciation of the foundation principles of the Republic.

Mr. Grady was a Democrat and a Southern Democrat. Yet he was a protectionist and believed that the development of the South depended upon the maintenance of the protective tariff. Under it the iron manufactures and various products of the soil in that section of our country have been increased to a wonderful extent while the general business interests have strengthened to a remarkable degree. Mr. Grady has encouraged the incoming of Northern laborers and capitalists and aided every legitimate enterprise. He has been a politician, always true to his party’s candidates, though he has been somewhat at variance with his party’s tariff policy. He has been a good man, a noble, true Christian gentleman, an earnest, faithful editor and a model laborer for the promotion of his people’s interests.

467

THE MODEL CITIZEN.

From the “Boston Globe.”

Henry W. Grady dead? It seems almost impossible.

Only ten days ago his fervid oratory rang out in a Boston banquet hall, and enchanted the hundreds of Boston’s business men who heard it. Only nine days ago the newspapers carried his glowing words and great thoughts into millions of homes. And now he lies in the South he loved so well—dead!

“He has work yet to do,” said the physician, as the great orator lay dying. “Perhaps his work is finished,” replied Mr. Grady’s mother. She was right. To the physician, as to many others, it must have seemed that Mr. Grady’s work was just beginning; that not much had yet been accomplished. For he was young; only thirty-eight years old. He had never held a public office, and there is a current delusion that office is the necessary condition of success for those endowed with political talents. But Mr. Grady had done his work, and it was a great work, too. He had done more, perhaps, than any other man to destroy the lingering animosities of the war and re-establish cordial relations between North and South. His silvery speech and graphic imagery had opened the minds of thousands of influential men of the North to a truer conception of the South. He had shown them that the Old South was a memory only; the New South a reality. And he had done more than any other man to open the eyes of the North to the peerless natural advantages of his section, so that streams of capital began to flow southward to develop those resources.

He was a living example of what a plain citizen may do for his country without the aid of wealth, office or higher position than his own talents and earnest patriotism gave him.

Boston joins with Atlanta and the South in mourning the untimely death of this eloquent orator, statesmanlike 468thinker, able journalist and model citizen. He will long be affectionately remembered in this city and throughout the North.

A LOYAL UNIONIST.

From the “Chicago Times.”

Mr. Grady was a loyal Unionist. The son of a Union veteran, proud of his sire’s part in the battle-fields of the rebellion, could not be more so. He stood manfully against the race prejudice which would lash the negro or plunder or terrorize him, but he recognized fully the difficulties of the race problem, and would not blink the fact, which every Northern man who sojourns in the South soon learns, that safety, progress, peace, and prosperity for that section forbid that the mere numerical superiority of the blacks should authorize them to push the white man, with his superior capability for affairs, from the places where laws are made and executed. Mr. Grady looked upon the situation dispassionately and told the truth about it to Northern audiences.

He was an active force in the journalism of the South, where the journal is still regarded largely as an organ of opinion and the personality of the editor counts for much. He entered the newspaper field when the modern idea of news excellence had obtained a full lodgment at the North and at one or two places South of the Ohio, and while he loved to occupy the pulpit of the fourth page he was not unmindful of the demand for a thorough newspaper.

HIS WORK WAS NOT IN VAIN.

From the “Cleveland, O., Plaindealer.”

The death of Henry W. Grady of the Atlanta Constitution is a loss to journalism, to the South and to the nation. 469He had done good work for each, and still more could reasonably be expected of him but for his untimely death at the comparatively early age of thirty-eight. His fatal illness was contracted when serving the cause of the whole country by pleading in the North for a more generous and just judgment of the Southern people and of their efforts to solve the race problem. He has done much toward bringing about a better understanding by his brilliant, earnest and logical addresses to Northern audiences, in which he abated nothing of that intense love for that part of the Union of which he was a native, but at the same time appealed to them as citizens of the same country, as brothers, to bury past differences, make allowance for conditions that were not desired and could not be avoided, and substitute friendly confidence for prejudiced suspicion. More of the same good work was expected of him, but as his mother said when speaking of his dangerous condition: “May be his work is finished.” Under his management the Constitution worked unceasingly for the physical and moral regeneration of the South. It preached the gospel of the “New South,” redeemed by work, by enterprise and by devotion to the Union of which the South is an integral part, and its preaching has not been in vain. With pen and tongue, equally eloquent with both, Mr. Grady labored in behalf of the cause he had so much at heart, and, although dying thus early, he had the satisfaction of knowing that his work was not in vain; that it is certain to bring forth good fruit.

THE BEST REPRESENTATIVE OF THE NEW SOUTH.

From the “Albany, N.Y., Journal.”

By the death of Henry Woodfin Grady the country loses one of its most brilliant journalists.

Throughout the country his death will be deplored as most untimely, for the future was bright before him. He 470had already, although only thirty-eight years old, reached the front rank in his profession, and he had been talked of as nominee for the vice-presidency. This eminence he won not only by his brilliant writing, but also by his integrity and high purposes. He never held an office, for though he could make and unmake political destinies, he never took for himself the distinctions he was able to bestow upon others. Though he inherited many ante-bellum prejudices and feelings, yet no editor of the South was more earnest, more fearless in denouncing the outrages and injustices from time to time visited upon the negro. So the American people have come to believe him the best representative of the “New South,” whose spokesman he was—an able journalist and an honest man who tried according to his convictions to make the newspaper what it should be, a living influence for the best things in our political, industrial and social life.

A LAMENTABLE LOSS TO THE COUNTRY.

From the “Cincinnati Commercial Gazette.”

He was a man of high faculties and purposes, and of great breadth of sympathy. He had courage of heart equal to capacity of brain, and placed in the core of the South, in her most busy city, and the undoubted representative man of her ambition and progress, it is lamentable that he should be lost to the country.

It seemed to be in no man’s grasp to do more good than he had appointed for his task. He has done that which will be memorable. It is something forever, to plow one deep furrow in fertile land for the seed that is in the air.

He is dead, as the poets that are loved must die, still counting his years in the thirties; and there is this compensation, that it may yet be said of him in the South, as 471was so beautifully sung by Longfellow of Burns in Scotland, that he haunts her fields in “immortal youth.”

And then to die so young, and leave

Unfinished what he might achieve.

... He haunts his native land

As an immortal youth; his hand

Guides every plow,

He sits beside each ingle-nook;

His voice is in each rushing brook,

Each rustling bough.

A SAD LOSS.

From the “Buffalo, N.Y., Express.”

The death of no other man than Henry Woodfin Grady could have plunged Georgia into such deep mourning as darkens all her borders to-day. Atlanta is the center of Georgia life, and Grady was the incarnation of Atlanta vitality. His was a personality difficult to associate with the idea of death. He was so thoroughly alive, bodily and mentally, he was so young, the fibers of his being reached out and were embedded in so many of the living interests of Georgia and the whole South, that no thought of his possible sudden end would rise in the minds of any who knew him. And his friends were legion. Everybody called him Henry.

In ten years he rose from obscurity to a prominence that made him the foremost figure of his day in the South, and had already linked his name with the second office in the gift of the American people. As an orator he was the pride of the South, as Chauncey M. Depew is of the North. As a journalist no Northern man bears the relation to his section that Grady did to the South. As a public-spirited citizen it seemed only necessary for Grady to espouse a project for it to succeed beyond all expectations. Yet but a few years ago he started three newspapers in succession 472and they all failed! Failure was the alphabet of his success.