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I •% 1 |Qa,-.t). jltt^^^^^w i 1 i i '^^HH ll ^^^IP^^^ i^ 1 A h. ^^. /M^ HENRY W. GRADY The Editor The Orator The Man 45, By JAMES W. LEE Author of ''The Making of a Afan," '^Earthly Footsteps of the Man of Galilee" etc. FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY, New York. Chicago. Toronto. Publishers cf Evangelical Literature. 3114 \ Copyrighted jSg6 by Fleming H. Revell Company. 4 JLo COL. EVAN P. HOWELL AND MK. W. A. HEMPHILL, WHO FOUNDED AND HAVE GUIDED THE FORTUNES OF THE GREAT NEWSPAPER THROUGH WHICH HENRY W. GRADY GAVE HIS MESSAGE OF HOPE AND INSPIRATION TO THE PEOPLE OF HIS COUNTRY. c THE MISSION OF A GREAT LIFE. "There is a soul above the soul of each, A mightier soul, which yet to each belongs; There is a sound made of all human speech, And numerous as the concourse of all songs; And in that soul lives each, in each that soul, Though all the ages are its lifetime vast; Each soul that dies, in its most sacred whole Receiveth life that shall forever last. And thus forever with a wider span Humanity o'erarches time and death; Man can elect the universal man. And live in life that ends not with his breath; And gather glory that increases still Till Time his glass with Death's last dust shall fill." Richard Watson Dixon, INTRODUCTION. Human life, in all its length and depth and breadth, is one. Like a vast ocean, it throws itself against the shores of all time and sends up its waters to fill and feed and refresh the heart of every man. The waters upon which the ships sail up to the quay of Liverpool to-day are the same that washed the shores of England in the time of Julius Ciesar. The waves which sob and murmur between the dangerous rocks of Jaffa to-day are the same that held in their arms the crafts that brought the cedars from Lebanon which Solomon used in the building of the Temple. The life that throbs in the hearts of the fourteen hundred millions of peo- 10 HENRY IV. GRADY pie who live on the earth to-day is the same life that throbbed in human hearts when Rameses I I. oppressed the children of Israel, and when Shi- shak, the Kin^' of Ef,'ypt, captured Jer- usalem in the time of Rehoboam. Shore lines have changed; here the sea has made inroads upon the land, and there the land has taken the place of the sea; but it is the same unrest- ing;, inexhaustible, briny deep that throu^^h all the ages rolls round and round the world. Individuals have ap- peared and passed away; new opinions havij come to take the place of old ones; new hearts respond to the ever moving tide where other hearts beat before; but it is the same mysterious, unfathomable life that has lifted itself up to create and complete self-conscious- ness in all the individuals who have toiled and feared and hoped and lived and died on earth. MISS ION OF A GREA T LIFE 11 the The reel current that flowed from the heart of God into the veins of man created in his image in the morning of the world, has increased and extended itself over the globe and has capacity to widen itself to the utmost bounds of time. The same atoms of oxygen and the same atoms of nitrogen have been keeping company from the beginning of man's appearance on earth, that they might feed and keep ablaze the flame of life. The same subtle something which scientists call ether, that surrounds and penetrates all worlds and fills up the vacant spaces which seem to lie between all constellations, has been utilized from the time of Adam to the present to transport the rays of the sun over ninety-five millions of miles to light the pathway and build the forest la HENRY W. GRADY and produce the food for the children of God. The lightning that draws our car and lights our street and cooks our food, is the same Elisha saw playing about the cloud that arose to put to confusion the prophets of Baal on the heights of Carmel. There is no new ocean, no new atmosphere, no new ether, no new lightning, no new physical life. It is the same atmosphere feeding the breath, distributing the sounds, and insuring the health of the people of all races and times. It is the same ether enwrapping the stars and connecting the systems and mediating the light of the universe in all the centuries. It is the same electricity, subtle, weird, wild, that now hides in the air like a harmless, invisible ghost, and then like a fiend writes its name in letters of fire across the bosom of the ; children ir car and r food, is ibout the :onfusion leights of no new no new life. It iing the ids, and pie of all ne ether nnecting light of !S. subtle, 1 the air ost, and name in 1 of the MISSION OF A GREAT LIFE 13 cloud, that has been the wonder and puzzle of mortals in the flight of all the years. So it is the same wondrous, immeas- urable human life, robust in the will of Menes, the first king of Egypt; stirred by strange rumors from the skies in the spirit of Abraham, the father of the faithful; exalted and sublime and lumin- ous as it rises to the vision of God in the mind of Moses; pathetic and mourn- ful, as it measures the sorrow of a broken heart in the lamentations of Jeremiah; malignant and coarse and base, as it flows through the dreams of Herod; undaunted, unyielding and triumphant, as it glows in the deter- mination of Saint Paul; wild, furious, as the pulse beats of a volcano, as it breaks from the heart of Nero; but in all it is the same life that has flowed through the length and breadth of the human race. 14 HENRY W. GRADY One life, with expressions as varied as the individuals who have found in its depths the support of their thought and feeling; one life, whose high waves we have named Abraham, Job, Con- fucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, Alexander the Great, Plato, Aristotle, Cato, Savanarola, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Kant, Bis- marck, Gladstone; and whose little waves that never rise high enough to fleck themselves with foam or crown their heads with white caps, we never name at all, but who in reality are gladdened and blest by the same life that rose in the billows which all men see. It is a marvelous evidence of God's economy that he has used only one life to support and furnish and com- plete the countless personalities which have appeared upon its surface, to learn their names, to recognize their MISSION OF A GREA T LIFE 15 accountability, to play their part and then to pass into the unseen. The illustration that compares a human being to a wave of the sea, however, must not be carried too far. An individual is like a wave in the re- spect that he is an expression of the ;;reat underlying sea of life, but he is totally unlike a wave of the sea in the respect that in rising up he gets organ- ized and individuated, and empowered with self-consciousness and self-deter- mination. A wave of the sea comes up from the general fund of water and sinks back as it came up, uncolored and inarticulate. But a human being appears like a wave on the sea of life, and finds himself met and held and possessed by a spirit which claims him and marks him and puts the stamp of personality upon him, and breathes the power and immensity of personality within him; then it is that he becomes IG HEA'RV ^r. GRADY v ■■ I ^' \: |i ! conscious that he is distinct and sepa- rate from the p^eneral fund of hfe. He is then no longer harnessed in t'le traces of physical forces, along with the damps and the winds. It is true he still finds himself housed in a mansion of perishing elements, held by the laws of gravity and rising and falling with the changing temperature; but with the dawn of self-consciousness he sees breaking around him the light of a new day and lying before him the shores of a new world. He has passed from the realm of matter ponderable and measurable and quantitative to the realm of spirit, im- ponderable, immeasurable and quali- tative. He is no longer a child of time; he is a citizen of eternity. The v/aters of the great, heaving, human sep "ill rise around his heart; but bav^is. into their liquid arms they can no more pull and disintegrate and scatter I! MISSION OF A ORE A T LIFE 17 im of and , ini- uali- d of The man but no tter his self-determining soul. Instead of being subject to the subconscious bil- lows of life and so loosely put together that they are able easily to pull him apart, he finds the billows are subject to him and that over their angry heads and through their surging folds he can ride on his triumphant way. Life lifts him up but does not possess him as the sea possesses the wave; he possesses it. He can use it to ride against the breakers or to bear him to some friendly shore. He can use electricity to send a message of good will to a friend across the sea, or he can appropriate it and store it for the purpose of burning his neighbor's house. He can use the vibrations of the atmosphere to bear from his lips the curses which measure his rage, or the prayers which indicate his devotion. So the life which rises within him to make possible the dis- 18 HENRY W. GRADY covery of his personal spirit, he can use in building a saint, or in furnish- ing and equipping a future of unutter- able misery. Strange, that from the same life one man should sip the elixir that eternally cheers the soul, and that another should drink the gall that embitters it forever. The contrast in the different uses men have made of life is infinite. Cheops used it to build a temple of stone to repose in after death, that promises to last as long as the Alps; Enoch used it to cultivate the acquaintance of God, and learned in three hundred years so completely how to adjust him- self to the companionship of Heaven that God took him. Moses used it to tread the lonely and sublime heights where the finite spirit enters into correspondence with the in- finite Spirit, i tl \\ MISSION OF A GREAT LIFE 10 David used it to convert into sonfj and prayer and praise, and thoii^^h weighted with the cares of state, he devoted enough of his hfe to silent meditation to enable him to write the literature that has been the support of the spirit in its attempts to rise to God ever since. Isaiah used it to look across the cen- turies to the time when the knowledge of the Lord should cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Socrates used it to call off the atten- tion of the youth of Athens from the deceitful and sordid ways of life to the honorable and serene majesty of intel- lectual manhood. Alexander the Great used it as so much furious force with which to carry devastation and despair to the peoples of the world. Saint John used it to feed as amiable a heart and to sustain a disposition as 90 HENRY IV. GRADY i tender and sweet as ever moved amid the conflicts of time. Robert Raikes converted his life into clothes for ragged children, and into knowledge and hope and heaven for ignorant and lost children. Charles Dickens used up his life in the formation of stories that awakened anew in the world a sense of kinship and brotherhood among men. George Peabody converted his life into the accumulation of money that he might use it to widen the horizon of thought and increase nobility of spirit among the youth of coming times. So variously have men used the gift of life; coming to one man only once, bringing opportunities to shore in his spirit only once, it would seem that every man would have made the most of it; that he would have sounded its translucent depths in order that he MISSIOX OF A GREAT LII'E 21 might bring to the fiirnisliment of his personahty all that it had to give; but this is not the case; but a cursory glance over the history of the race is sufficient to show us that more men have used life as a decoction from which to distill bitterness than have used it as an essence from which to draw hope and peace. Like immortal ships the spirits of great men sail the ocean of time, bear- ing the treasures and the archives of the civili;jations which gave them birth. They outride the fury of all the storms and will sail on till:- " The stars grow old, The sun grows cold, And the leaves of the judgment book unfold." A nation is unfortunate beyond ex- pression that has no son with genius wide and universal enough to embody and convey to the future her history. Whatever may be her wealth and her 0'» //KA'RV U: GRADV il ii commercial importance, she is without a future. Habylon was a vast and rich empire; she embraced the most fertile portion of the j^lobe; she had a capitol that eclipsed all others in splendor and wealth; but amon^^ her people she found no man amply endowed enough to understand and f;ive ])ermanent mental setting to her faith and her civilization. Her heart throbs, what- ever they were, got interpreted in no poem, explained in no philosophy, and written in no history. For knowledge of her we are dependent upon her ruins, her broken columns, and her pottery. Among none of her luxurious inhabitants did she find a genius to commit the keeping of her secrets and the records of her progress. Into oblivion has fallen all that bejeweled and pampered life that revelled in her magnificent palaces and amid her far- MISS/ON OF A GREA T LlhE :>3 to nd famed hanginp^ f^ardens. Over it all has settled the stillness of the desert, and the j;looin of eternal night. On the other hand, how secure is the Greece that flowered in her great men. She has been despoiled of her art treasures, her temples have fallen, the Parthenon is in ruins, 'but the two hundred years of her life which she deposited in her great men are im- mortal. No tooth of time, no war's bloody hand, no devastation of the years, can take from her the glory which she lifted and locked in the genius of her generals, her artists, her statesmen, and her philosophers. Epaminondas and Pericles still fight for her and guard with sleepless vigi- lance her fair name. Plato and Aris- totle still interpret her problems of destiny. Sophocles and Pindar still sing her glory. Herodotus and Thucy- dides still keep the record of her victo- 24 J/luXRY IV. GRADY ries. Demosthenes and yli^schines still declare her matchless eloquence. Appclles and Phidias still ^nve imperish- able expression to her conceptions of form and beauty. She deposited her riches in the spirits of her f;ieat men, and they are forever secure. No thief can steal them; no rust can corrupt them. The unfolding centuries may look in upon them and enjoy them, but their passage through the years cannot be arrested. '*Tlie soul of man is larger than the sky, Deeper than (jcean or the abysmal dark Of the unfathom'd eentre. Like that Ark Which in its sacred hold uplifted high, O'er thedrown'd hills, the hinnan family, And stock reserv'd of every living kind. So, in the compass of the single mind. The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie, That make all worlds." It was the misfortune of Tyre that she had no son among all her mer- chant princes with genius universal and deep enough to bear to distant ages a record of her inner life. I ! MISSJOX OF A iJREA T LIFE 25 Life in Tyre took the form of sails which were spread to every breeze, and the strokes (if oars heard in the waters af every sea. Her hfe stood in many storied 'houses, rustled in the silk of Tyrian purple, and uttered itself in the ears of all the world. But what the people of Tyre thouj^ht about death, or immortality, or duty, or righteousness, or relij^^ion, or philoso- phy, or poetry, or literature, or farm- ing, or plowing, or cooking, or even sea-faring or trade, we can never know. Her life simply lifted itself into the mammoth and unparalleled products of the merchandise of ancient times. It took the form of wharves, of ships, of purple awning, of revelry, of eating, of drinking, of low sensual pleasure; hence it has been utterly swept away. It stood only in masts, shipboards, ivory benches, sails, pilots, mariners, towers, silver, iron, tin, lead, brass, horses, 26 HENRY IV. GRADY mules, broidered work, fine linen, coral, agate, honey, oil, balm, wool, cassia, calamus, precious clothes, chariots, lambs, spices, chests, merchants, riches, sardius, topaz, diamond, beryl, onyx, jasper, sapphire, emerald, car- buncle, tabrets and pipes. Through these it lifted itself up and defied the laws of God and man. It brought them together and piled them the one upon the other without reference to the moral law, which is to the spirit- ual world what the laws of gravity are to the physical. Hence, chough they made of them the highest and most glittering heap that ever responded to the rays of the sun on earth before, they were disintegrated and scattered by war and caught by the sea and to-day are buried under its ever-moving waters. Of Tyre we know somethmg from Ezekiel, something from Herod, and M/SS/OX OF A GREA T LIFE 27 something from Strabo, and something from the Bible and historians among surrounding nations. But as far as the people of Tyre themselves are con- cerned, they have mingled with the dust or gone to the depths of the sea without leaving a single record that enables us to get the history of that splendid, wealthy, thundering, unright- eous city. It was a magnificent pageant; it was a lurid, multitudinous dream; it was a vision, streaked with will-o'-the-wisp fire, thrown up from the damps of appetite and passion. It was an unreal air castle, raised at great labor, without foundation, and harmonizing with nothing that was fixed and eternal. It was a nightmare, filled with regal and splendid actors, but uttering their speech and playing their part and filling the nights of centuries to no purpose; WP 28 niuXRV ir. GRADY a nightmare to be broken and scattered without a trace of its meaning and awful reahty with the dawn of a better day. It was a tragedy where merchant princes executed the wild and unregu- lated play, but with no Shakespeare to transmute it into spiritual and ever- lasting form. It was a poem, with rhyme and all the accompaniments of human inter- ests, with passion and cloud and fire and birth and death; but with noTasso to bear it to coming generations. It was a history typifying and illus- trating the stages of human life from Eden, where man walked with God, to the bottom of hell, where he lived with devils; but with no Herodotus to record it. It was a drama, where angels from heaven and fiends from the pit con- tended with the human spirit, and ^riSSION OF A GREAT LIFE 29 where the human spirit refused the companionship of angels and chose rather to consort with fiends; but with no Milton to clothe it in forms insuring it immortality. Tyre was so busy eating and dress- ing and drinking and trading and revel- ing that she raised no son to give eternal setting in poetry or history or tomb or art or religion to her dark, unsounded and unuttered life. Jerusalem has been plundered and pillaged seventeen times; but no city has existence so secure, because it has been transmuted from the realm of rock and marble and gold and war and hate and blood, to the realm of undying thought and unfailing spirit. There is the Jerusalem of Melchis- edec, transmuted by his faith into an eternal city rising above the storms and clouds and changing fortunes of time, beautiful and fair as the morning. fe. ^ 30 HENRY IV. GRADY \% i I 1 There is the Jerusalem of the Jebus- ites, anchored forever to the threshing floor of Araunah. There is the Jerusalem of David, sweet and holy, lifted before all nations in rhythm and perpetually holding its place in the unchanging spheres by its notes of divine music, palaces in song, olive trees in song, gates in song, Mount of Olives in song, charming the ear and refreshing the hearts of the saints of all ages. There is the Jerusalem of Solomon, with its temple covered with gold, glit- tering under the sun of the deep Syrian sky throughout all time. There is the Jerusalem of Nehemiah, built with a weapon of warfare in one hand and an implement of industry in the other, fixed and serene in the ever- lasting sky. There is the Jerusalem of Isaiah, liv- ing in thought, breathing in prophecy M/SS/ON OF A GREA T LIFE 31 and falling in tears, but rising in aspira- tions that are never to pass away. There is the Jerusalem of Jeremiah, changing with the cadences of his sad and mournful poem, but unchanging and unchangeable in the fact that that poem will float it forever. In the deep and wailing heart of the prophet God raised up to tell Jerusalem of her sins, the holy city will sail like a majestic ship to the period when time shall be no more. There is the Jerusalem of Nicode- mus and of our Lord Jesus Christ, with its temple, its palace of Herod, its gar- den of Gethsemane, its Mount Calvary, rising in holiness and falling in sin, but fixed in its elements and in its inhabit- ants and in its gardens and walls for- ever in the literature of the New Testa- ment. Then there is the Jerusalem of Titus, caught and held by the mind of Josephus, with its temple still stand- 32 HENRY W. GRADY the most beautiful and costly structure ever reared by the heart of faith; with its doomed people rushing to and fro, ready to die rather than see it invaded; with the clo id of battle hanging prt^g- it with ruin and fire ab( it; )ove then leveled to the ground, its very site turned by the plowshare of the alien. But the temple, and the cloud, and the dying defender, and the smoking and mouldering ruins will live on through all time in the glowing periods of the historian. There is the Jerusalem of the Cru- saders, filling the songs of the gallant knights and established in the wars and history and literature of the Cru- sades forever. Nothing is more rational than the tribute we pay to the lives of great men. They really represent the his- tory and toil and trial and struggle of the nations to which they belong. It ' 1; i\//SS/0.\ OF A GRl-A T LIFE .-ja is well for us to learn that the States of the American Union are not to find their support and their future per- manence in their real estate or in their great cities, but in their men. It is the Massachusetts of Daniel Webster and not the Massachusetts of shop and factory that will get a hear- ing in that coming republic over which no sun has yet arisen. It is the Kentucky of Henry Clay that will be the proud synonym of strength when the Kentucky of fine horses and blue grass shall have been forgotten. The South Carolina of rice and cot- ton and earthquakes is changing and evanescent, but the South Carolina of John C. Calhoun is as imperishable as the foundations of God's throne. It is not the Virginia of tobacco and commercial prosperity that will be in- teresting to the generations yet un- 34 HENRY II \ GRADY I j f born, but they will study the Virginia folded in the spirits of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. The Illinois of i86i was not so rich in great cities and railroads as the Illi- nois of 189C, but the Illinois of the first period will be better known in the ages to come, because it was fortunate enough to find a great spirit in the per- son of Abraham Lincoln to commit the history of her courage, her convic- tions, and her aspirations. Twenty years of Southern history, from 1870 to 1890, gathered itself into the life of a young man about whose name there hangs a charm the passing years will not dispel. Mem- ories that are dear to the generation that has grown up since the war cluster about the name of Henry W. Grady. His name is accompanied by a fra- grance that refreshes like the bloom of spring. It stands for a gentle and lov- MISSION OF A GREA T LIFE 35 ing spirit that appropriated the melody of song, the mystery of hglit, and the beauty of ilowers, to turn them into tears for tliose who wept, and into cheers for those who re- joiced. It stands for a personahty that was lifted into historic position by the love of his countrymen, and which was charged with the high duty of bearing to future generations the traditions and hopes and history of a great time. The recent struggles and fears and aspira- tions incident to the renovation and re- construction of the Southern States gathered themselves into his life. It has gone from our view, but in the dawning of days unborn, men will look into that life to measure our enter- prise, to determine our purpose, and to sound our thought. It was not by an unreasoning and arbitrary decision that from all our Southern sons Henry W. Grady was i.% I t: I!] I 36 IIESRY W. GRADY Mi 1 1 appointed to bear our greetings and our history to the future. His spirit was larf^e and susceptible and sympa- thetic. In it there were chords that re- sponded to all the notes in the life about him. In it the scale was com- plete, and notes of pain, notes of con- flict, notes of joy, came back in song. *' He saw on earth another light Than that which Ht his eye Come forth, as from the soul within, And from a higher sky." Whatever of commotion and stress and friction there weis without him, was turned to order and harmony when it touched his life. His spirit beat re- sponsive to the wants of all, and car- ried beneath its pulses and currents kinship and fellowship with all. In it the tide of Southern life touched the high- water mark, nnd upon the shores of his genius left the record of its trials, its achievements, and its prospects. M/SS/ON OF A GREA T Ul-I- 37 Under tlie cover of his name they will be borne to the ages which lie folded far out in unmeasured time. " Uke a streamer strmvn „p,m tlie «i„ i fet "Every man contains in himself the ele- ments of all the rest of humanity. They lie in the background, but they are there. Some time or other to every man must come the consciousness of this vaster life." — Edward Carpenter. "True word, kind deed, sweet song shall vi- brate still In rings that wander through celestial air, And human will shall build for human will, Fair basement to a palace yet more fair." -VV. V. U. Call. "In man's self arise August anticipations, symbols, types Of a dim splendor ever on before In that eternal circle life pursues." — Browning. " To make undying music in the world Breathing as beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man." — George Eliot. 'I ■I CHAPTER I. Henry W. Grady, the Editor. The glory of the mind is the pos- session of two eyes, the eye of sense and the eye of reason. Through the one it looks out upon the world of mat- ter and fact. Through the other it beholds the world of idee and relation. Both worlds are real, and through the niind commerce is kept up between tliem. Along this mental highway ma- terial facts make a pilgrimage to the holy land of reason. There they are changed into ideas. Stars are turned into astronomy, atoms into chemistry, rocks into geology, and plants into bot- any. Over the same royal road ideas pass to the world of sense. There they are changed into facts. Ideas of w 42 HENRY W, GRADY \ m beauty are changed into painting, and Raphael's transfiguration blesses the world. Ideas of harmony are turned into music, and Handel's Messiah agi- tates the thoughts and hopes of men with the melody of the skies. Ideas of form are changed into sculpture, and Michael Angelo's Moses augments the world's fund of conviction and courage. By changing facts into ideas the mind gives us science. By changing ideas into facts it gives us art. With- out science life would be without bread; without art it would be without ideals. Science ministers to the body, art to the spirit. Men who go from things to ideas are practical; those who go from ideas to things are the seers. Seers throw the light of their genius into the dark beyond, disclosing new worlds for men. They are the leaders; they are in the vanguard of human progress. They believe: 43 THE EDITOR " New occasions teach new duties; Tnne makes ancient ^mkkI uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, Who would keep abreast of truth." ' They believe that: " Lo! before us ^leani truth's camp fires, We, ourselves, must ])ilgrims be; Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly Through the desperate winter sea; Nor attempt the Future's portal With the past's deep-rusted key!" I. Henry W. Grady must be classed with the artists. He looked from the side of the mind that borders the uni- verse of ideas, visions, relations. He was an idealist. He looked through the imagination into the kingdom of light. He saw truth and beauty and love billowing away to infinity. He despised not the world of hard limita- tion and fact. But he found not his rest in it, nor his inspiration. He slaked his thirst from the waters which flow from under the throne of God. 44 HENRY IV. GRADY Violets and buttercups which grew on the mountain side, did not waste their fragrance as he passed by, but there they grew, covering with their blue and their beauty, the hills of day for him. Leaves in autumn woods were not ignored by him, but he culti- vated the habit of looking toward the clime where the leaves never die. All sights and sounds and seasons in the world of change and death were loved by him. But a window there was in his mind looking into an illimitable realm where all sights brought glad- ness, all sounds hope, and all seasons inspiration. That he was by endow- ment an idealist, and by practice an artist, is proven by his work as an editor, his achievements as an orator, and his life as a man. THE EDIJOl^ 45 II. With the passing years art has made great progress, not in the direction of form, or coloring, or symmetry, but toward wider distribution. In the be- gnming, its ministry was to kings and scholars; its advance has been toward extension rather than perfection. The pyramid of Gizeh, the most expensive monument ever seen, was reared to perpetuate the memory of a great Egyptian king. A country was drained of revenue and life to regale the pride of one man. The Parthenon minis- tered to a few f^rreat men in Greece. The Cathedrals of the middle ages blest and helped a wider circle. But it was left to the time which is ours to build chapels and churches, as broad in their ministry and aims as the life of humanity. The early poetry concerned itself nn 40 HENRY IV. GRADY r>! i II about the wars of gods and the con- tentions of kings. As the sacredness of human hfe came to be seen, more and more did it tend to catch within the sweep of its rhythm the incidents and traditions and loves of the common people. It has been the glory of our day to give ideal setting to the '* Old Oaken Bucket " and the " Village Blacksmith." III. Henry Grady had the order of gen- ius that makes the artist. The form in which that genius expressed itself was determined by the time and the section in which he lived. The corre- lation of the fine arts is nearly as well accepted as the correlation of forces. The persistent physical force may ex- press itself in heat or light or electric- ity or magnetism. They are all forms of the same thing, and any one may pass to any of the others. THE EDITOR An Genius is the persistent mental force which expresses itself in art. It may take any one of its forms. Music is genius in tone. Painting is genius in color. Sculpture is genius in form. Poetry is genius in rhythm. Architect- ure is genius in sublime combination. Genius of the highest order is capable of expressing itself in any or all of these. Michael Angelo was by turns poet, painter, sculptor, and architect. The genius of Henry W. Grady arose so far above the plane of ordi- nary talent that it was capable of trans- mutation into any of the fine arts. Had he lived in the thirteenth century he would have been an architect. Had he lived in the sixteenth and in Flor- ence he would have been a painter. Had he lived in the seventeenth and in England he would have been a poet. Living in the nineteenth and in the South he was an editor and an orator. m 4S //ICXRV IV. GRADY ii Ifi m In thought and spirit he Hved in the boundless, the radiant, the beautiful. He saw visions as fair as Rubens's, and temples as perfect as that of Phid- ias. But his genius was controlled by his heart. " His genius was not a tiling apart, A i)illarcd hermit of the hrain Hoarding with incommunicable art Its intellectual gain." His sympathy for men was so con- stant and so universal that it denied his genius expression in forms which only touched the few. His love im- pelled his thought to expression as wide as the needs, as deep as the suf- fering, and as complex as the interests and relations of his fellow-men. A temple embodying his genius would not have given him so much pleasure as a poor man's heart made happy by it. Hence, without, perhaps, thinking THE EDITOR 49 so. unconsciously he selected that niodiuni tliroii/^di which to express the ideas of beauty, truth and good- ness which he saw that had the wid- est flow. What instrument permitted him to touch most people ? In what way could he get into relation with most human want ? What touched man on most sides of his character and stimu- lated most thought and provoked most endeavor ? It was the age of the news- paper. It liew into every man's home and carried a message to every man's thought. Into the newspaper he would breathe his message. Through the newspaper he would tell to men the visions which he saw of hope and help and inspiration. Not for money did he write — not for money did he care, but througli writing would he make his life contribution to human weal. The newspaper became his brush and let- : 50 IIEXRY \V. GRADY ters became his pif^^ments. Through these he determined to make known what he felt for men and what he wished for men. He had genius to embody; he had pictures to paint. The South was his canvas. Upon this broad section he would embody what he saw. By going to every man's home with a message, stimulating and beautiful, he would stir his heart and move his will. Thus through men he would embody all over the South the ideas which he saw. He would put them into fields of waving grain. He would put them into cattle upon every hill. He would put them into a home for every family. Around every home he would plant orchards and vineyards. Over every door he would trace vines and flowers. In the centers of popu- lation he would put great cities, for distribution and for help. Thus he \ ////•; EDI TOR 61 would paint a picture standinfj over men and under men and blessing; men. A panorama filled with the actual things men need, rather than the rep- resentation of these to hang in great museums. Before he left college he delivered a speech entitled " Castles of Fancy." He painted an island beautiful for sit- uation, embraced by the mild waters of a friendly sea. This was covered with residences handsome and inviting. In these lived families without care and without want. This was the vision he had for his loved South. Through the daily newspaper he sent it, with his love to all our people. They responded to the truth he uttered. He saw his beloved section rising from the desola- tion of war to independence and wealth. He found his compensation in watch- ing and recording her progress. No Diana or Venus did he attempt w it i' ! 'i" A3 ///:A7v'}' //'. (;A\I/)\' to l)rin;^^ from r()ii;^^h marble, but by hnin^^ word to put thu bciuity of Venus and the enterprise of Diana into every sister, mc^tluT and wife. No sublime conception did he seek to realize in tem])le or cathedral, but he would see his conception distributed and lifted into a dwellin^^ for every man's fainily, a school for every man's children, and a chur( h where all the jieople could worship God. He would see them in brid^'es spanning every river, in mills grinding the people's bread, in facto- ries spinning their clothes, and in rail- roads transporting their products. He would see them lifted into an asylum for the blind, a shelter for the orphan, and a home where the veteran could could spend in peace his declining years. Ideas of harmony he had, but he would see them turned into the whirr of the spindle, the ring of the ham- mer, the splash of the steamer's wheel I J THE EDITOR .% and the sound of the flying train. The music of children's hiughter was sweeter to him than symphonies of Beethoven. Ideas of poetry he doubtless had, but he would translate them into the steady march of pro^Tess. and into the pulsebeats of the happy plowman. • Let it not be thought that he sought nothing beyond the realization of his genius in the material upbuilding of his section. Because of the col lition the South was in after the war this was most pressing and imuKdiate. He would put truth in every mind, the flowers of charity in every heart, honor and fairness in every relation, and the consolation of religion in every spirit. Nor is it to be supposed that he was indifferent to the advancement of other sections of our great country, but the greatest need was in his own.' While cherishing nought but love and 54 HENRY W. GRADY H;,' % good will for all, his aim was to con- tribute toward bringing the South to a level with other sections of the Union in wealth, as it had always been in character and honor. Did ever man have ambition nobler than to lift his countrymen from want to plenty, from dejection to hope, from n isunderstanding to love and charity ? Did ever fairer, lovelier vision float before artist's eye from out the sky of the ineffable to be thrown into form sublimer, or poem kinder, or music sweeter ? He used beauty to stimulate human courage, to embellish human spirit, to enlarge lumian thought. His concep- tions gathered themselves into clothes for human forms, into bread for chil- dren's mouths, into inspiration for hu- man hearts. He was God's almoner. Freely he received, freely he gave. Counted by years his life was not THE EDITOR 55 long, but it is my honest convictior that he got more of heaven's wealth into his time, and more of heaven's hope and joy into the hearts of his countrymen than any man of his day. He drove out more of hfe's shadows by the light of eternity's day, and hushed more of its tumult by the re- pose of eternity's truth than any man of his time. "His magic was not far to seek— He was so Iiiinian ! whether strong or weak. Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared, Bnt sate an equal guest at every board. No beggar ever felt him condescend. No prince presume; for still himself lie bare At manhood's simple level, and where'er He met a stranger, there he left a friend." IV. It is the conceit of those whose habit of mind is to look through the eye of sense that they see more in the actual tangible world than those who are accustomed to look through the eye 56 HENRY IV. GRADY W of reason. There never was a greater mistake. Those who see most in the world of mountain and sea and sky, are those who look most through im- agination into the world of idea princi- ple and relation. Adams in England, and Leverrier in France, discovered Neptune, not by sweeping the heavens with their tele- scopes, but by careful ciphering in their studies. " Mr. Turner," said a friend one day to him, " I never see in nature the glows and colors you put into your pictures." "Ah! don't you wish you could, though ? " was the painter's re- ply. In an apple's fall Newton saw the law of gravitation. Goethe sees in the sections of a deer's skull the spinal column modified. Emerson sings: " Let me go where I will I hear a sky born nuisic still. 'Tis not in the stars alone. Nor in the cups of budding flowers, Nor in the red-breast's yellow tone, 1^ THE EDITOR 57 Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, But in the mud and scum of thinj^s— There always, always, something sings." Humboldt habitually dwelt in the realm of principles and ideas. He spent only five years in America, and it took twelve quartos and sixteen folios, and half a dozen helpers and many years to put on record what he saw. " The poem hangs on the berry bush When comes the poet's eye; The street is one long masciuerade When Shakspeare passes by." It is said that Thoreau, the idealist, saw facts as one picks buttercups and daisies in the field. The literahst sees only the fact, the idealist sees the idea in the fact and beyond the fact. That Henry W. Grady was an ideal- ist, that he lived close by the clime of eternal realities, and looked out upon the stars which never go down; that he revelled in the light which comes from the sun which knows no sinking; that '■■ !■ i T 5S HENRY W. GRADY m he kept up constant commerce with the enchanted land of beauty, is attested by the aroma that accompanied his words, and the suggestions of boundlessness and wealth which they always called forth. Was he less practical because of this ? He was more. Was he further from the real world of suffering and toil be- cause of this.-^ He was nearer to it. He heard the music in the mud and scum of things. V. He was one of the first to call at- tention to the wealth of our mountains. In a speech delivered some years ago he told of a burial in Pickens county, Georgia. He said the grave was dug through solid marble, but the marble headstone wac ^toiv\ Vermont. That it was in a pine wilderness, but the pine cof^n came frem Cincinnati. THE EDITOR 59 That an iron mountain over-shadowed it, but the coffin nails and screws came from Pittsburg. That hard woods and metals abounded, but the corpse was hauled on a wagon from South Bend, Indiana. That a hickory grove was near by, but the pick and shovel handles came from New York. That the cotton shirt on the dead man came from Cincinnati, the coat and breeches from Chicago, and the shoes from Boston. That the folded hands were incased in white gloves which came from New York, and around the poor neck that had worn all its living days the bondage of lost opportunity was twisted a cheap cravat from Phil- adelphia. That the country, so rich in undeveloped resources, furnished nothing for the funeral but the poor man's body and the grave in which it awaited the judgment trump. And that the poor fellow lowered to his 00 HENRY n\ GRADY rest on coffin bands from Lowell car- ried nothing into the next world as a reminder of his home in this, save the halted blood in his veins, the chilled marrow in his bones, and the echo of the dull clods that fell on his coffin lid. The attention of the people he di- rected to the marble in our mountains, and lived to see $3,000,000 invested in marble quarries and machinery around that grave. Twenty miles from that grave he lived to see the largest marble-cutting works in the world. He called attention to the iron in our mines, and helped to lift the iron industries of the South to rivalry with those in England and the North. He saw it advance from 212,000 tons in 1880 to the production of 845,000 in 1887. He called attention to the immense ■:i : • I I THE EDITOR 61 fund of heat God had stored away for us when he laid the foundations of the world. He helped to swell the min- ing industry from 3,000,000 tons of coal in 1870 to 6,000,000 in 1880, and nearly i 5,000,000 tons in 1887. He saw not only the coal and iron, but the uses coming together to which they might be turned. He saw their relation to human comfort and to civil- ization, and under the influence of his enthusiasm expressed in brilliant edi- torial through his pen, there was built some of the largest furnaces and foun- dries in the world. To bring this raw material of iron and wood a little way from the mountain and the forest did not satisfy him. He wished to see it carried through nail factories, shovel and pick factories, carriage and wagon factories, on the spot. He wished to see it made ready for use and started from our doors upon the rounds of ," 03 HENRY W. GRADY li trade.. He urged the application of intelligence to raw material in bridge works, car works, chain works, mill works and hinge works. He saw the possibilities of Southern soil. In the elements which compose it, the genial skies above it, and the dews which come out of the night upon it; he saw watermelons, straw- berries, cherries, grapes, pears, peaches, and all fruits and foods. His editorials on truck farming were prose poems. They carried hope and courage to the Southern farmer. VI. He idealized the Georgia water- melon. The blossom that bore it, the vine that nourished it, and the planter that protected it. In flavor, in beauty, in haste to get ripe, he helped it to the first place in the markets of the world. After reading one of his editorials on THE EDITOR 68 the watermelon, it could be seen lying green and dew-covered in the patch, with contents sweet enough for the table of a king. He aided the Southern strawberry to herald first in Northern markets the coming spring. The Southern peach he made classic. He swelled its power to delight with its meat, and to suggest with its painted cheek the soft skies under which it grew. He made the Southern ground-pea a wanderer round the world and helped it to advertise our section from the pea-nut stands of all countries. He loved the cotton plant. In no poet's esteem did ever rose or hyacinth or violet stand higher. Its blossom opening its leaves of white to catch scarlet from the down-flowing light, revealed the birth of a king. It was interesting to him because of its rela- 64 IIEXRV IK GRADV \\\ tion to human comfort and use. He loved it because it caught so much of heaven's sunshine for man's use. It appropriated in the South every year from sky and ray enough cloth to pro- tect with a suit of clothes every human being on earth. He saw more in it than its lint. He proved that though the South received $350,000,000 for its 7,000,000 bales of cotton, that it would be a valuable plant though it gave no lint at all. That after the 3,000,- 000,000 pounds of lint was sold for the $350,000,000, there was left 3,750,000 tons of seed. That this would supply 150,000,000 gallons of oil, which, sold at forty cents a gallon, would bring $60,000,000. Or that it might be re- duced to lard, when it would produce 1,125,000,000 pounds of edible fat. which would equal in pounds 5,625,000 hogs of 200 pounds each. Allowing 200 pounds of edible fat to each person per t:ii^ THE EDITOR 65 It annum, he showed that this would keep in meat 5,625,000 citizens. But he saw still more in the wonder- ful cotton plant. He proved that after the seeds are stripped of lint and the oil pressed from the seeds, that there remained of each ton of seeds 1,000 pounds of hulls and 750 pounds of meal; that this meal and hulls was un- equaled as a fertilizer, of which the cotton crop of the South would yield 3,000,000 tons; that the meal was also the very best food for cattle and sheep, and fed to either produced meat or wool. He showed that it would fur- nish 6,586,500,000 pounds of stock food— enough to stall-feed 1,175,000 for one year, and that these in turn would furnish meat for 6,000,000 more people. Whatever he wrote was colored and magnetized by the hue and subtle force of his own personality. CO HENRY IV. GRADY '^ ■ ;■'■ !ii- He wrapped our mountains in the glow of his f^cnius, and sent the hght of his thought through the structure of our mineral formations, and invited millions of money to the establishment of mills and foundries to work them. He bathed our forests in the purple and pink and gold of his imagination and disclosed the value of our timber, and thus invited people to erect spoke and hub and ax -handle factories all through the Southern states. He laid the bars and lines of his ex- quisite imagery on the hills and valleys of our farms, and with graceful pencil- ings of light from the boundless re- sources of his mind worked traceries with the vines over the doors of our country homes and advertised the charm of rural dwelling places. in the ; light lire of nvited iment 2 in. oiirple lation ruber, spoke 3S all is ex- illeys 2ncil- s re- ;eries P our thr HENRY W. GRADY ^be ©rator. " What might be done, if men were wise — What glorious deeds, my suffering brother, Would they unite In love and right, And cease their scorn of one another ? '* Oppression's heart might be imbued With kindling drops of loving kindness, And knowledge pour From shore to shore, Light on the eyes of mental blindness. " The meanest wretch that ever trod, The deepest sunk in guilt and sorrow. Might stand erect In self-respect, And share the teeming world to-morrow. " What might be done ? This might be done, And more tiian this, my suffering brother — More than the tongue E'er said or sung. If men were wise and lov'd each other." Charles Mackay. ise — ther, done, ;r — :ay. CHAPTER II. Henry W. Gradv, the Orator. As an orator Mr. Grady sought, by spoken word and direct appeal, more immediately to accomplish what en- gaged his attention as an editor. To hnihl up his section in wealth, to quicken its enterprise and widen its outlook, was ever his aim as editor or orator. As an orator he was without an equal among Southern men of the younger generation. On the rostrum he was a master. He had action, pathos, fervor. In gesture, in manner, he was grace itself. Never did the artist in him re- veal itself more clearly than in one of liis great speeches. He was the em- iii i: I U I'.' ,1' ro HENRY ir. GRADY bodimcnt of strength, unity and beauty. The multitudes hung upon his hps en- tranced. A hving man had come to talk upon living issues, in words ex- quisitely chosen, in sentences marvel- ously wrought, and out of a heart overflowing with sympathy and good will. His message was magnetized and baptized by a personality that con- quered without effort. Straight to the heart it went, mingling with the blood and assimilating the thought. It cap- tured and held in the most magical way, imagination and reason and conviction. To hear his words as they fell from the chambers of his imagery, shot through with the colors of his own soul, and filled with the truth he had to utter, was absolutely delightful. They united hearts by a spell and made them the speaker's own. THE ORATOR 71 •eauty. ips en- •me to ds ex- larvel- heart good I and con- to the blood cap- ' way, ction. from shot own I had itful. and I. Out of a few colors Rubens manu- factured the radiant visions which il- lumine the great galleries of Europe. So Mr. Grady had ability to multiply what he saw through the eye of sense by the imagination. A scale became a fish, a leaf a tree, and a few sounds a symphony. In 1870 he saw the actual South, poor, dispirited and desolate. But as the perturbations of Uranus suggested to Adams the existence and orbit of Neptune, her very poverty and desola- tion suggested the wealth and the beauty which slept in her bosom. To bid this wealth step forth from its hid- ing place and mingle this beauty with the purposes and hopes of her people was his work as an orator. An invisible furnace stood by every iron mine, an invisible wagon factory i\ 72 HENRY IV. GRADY Ml by every hickory grove, an invisible cotton mill by every field. It was his work to make these ghosts take form. He was an idealist, but his ideals were workable and transferable. Like the engine that moved out of Watt's brain to revolutionize the world, and like the telephone that moved out of Bell's brain to make us neighbors, the ideals which Mr. Grady had were useful. They could hammer and spin and weave. They could build railroads, clear forests and remove mountains. They were not dainty, nor pale, nor thin. They were robust and hearty. They were in line with the laws of gravity and the drift of events. The stars in their courses helped them for- ward. Whether they ripened ui the straw- berries red, or hung in the wheat's yel- low sheaf, or sweetened in the water- THE ORATOR 73 melon's heart, they were ever human and helpful. Whether they hung in vines over the poor man's door, or turned in the car wheels of commerce, or remained for cheer and hope in the school-boy's breast, they were infusing purpose and urging forward. Whether they lifted themselves up into a Young Men's Christian Associa^ tion, or did their work in a veteran's home, or stirred a city to help the poor, they were the same lofty and gen- erous ideals. They cheered and stimu- lated like music. They started the feelings in larger How, and the thoughts on wider circles, and the will to higher aims. To him the heart of the South was a lute which for many years had been nuite, but whereon he learned to play. " He took it, and touched it, and made 111! 74 HENRY li: GRADY it thrill, and it thrills and throbs and quivers still." II. Grady had a soul full of music. He used his power as an orator to play it to the people. He piped in strains high and accents low. He sent it from him in march and w^altz, in plantation melody and cathedral hymn, in child's song and battle-strain. He sought through his oration to strike all the notes of the orchestra. He used it as a flute to play a sad night song; as guitar for minstrelsy as genial as the light; as violin for strains which made the blood tingle, or as organ to move the people with solemn swell to great action. He varied his instrument according to the character of the music he had to give. Sometimes the banjo helped him best to express the sportive jingle he THE ORATOR 7.") )bs and c. He play it strains it from .ntation : child's sought all the J a sad relsy as strains or as solemn cording ; had to )ed him ngle he ^elt. In one form or another his melody created a stir and tumult in the souls i){ all tlie people. . The bank president felt it forcing the atmosphere of his office into rhythmic waves, and disposing his heart to sweeter moods. The railway engineer recognized it, synchronizing with the orderly throb of his sublime machine and taking away his thought to loved ones at home. The farmer heard it, breaking over the hills, mingling with the winds that kept in constant undulation the leaves of his corn and responded with the whistle of cheer and hope. The sewing woman perceived it moving the solitary air of her room to quicker vibrations, and stitched away with lighter spirit. The country boy caught it, and found himself going off in aspiration for a nobler life. 70 HENRY IV. GKADV Wi The negro on the plantation was agitated by it, and was moved into hmnniing some song he loved. The poor tramp, homeless and bread- less and friendless, found it throwing around his lonely heart a warmer climate, and thought of his mother and the time when a little innocent boy he stood by her side. He was irresistible; refractory, stub- born, unlovable, hard men found it difficult to resist just a slight tinge of tenderness as the waves of Grady's music piled in successive layers around their unsympathetic lives. Stingy men who seemingly could have faced death with more com- posure than the sense of obligation to contribute a cent, felt in spite of them- selves the purse strings in their deep pockets slightly relaxing as they lis- tened to the music of Grady's appeal. Conservative people who take unc- on was id into bread- rowing Vtirnier icr and boy he ', stiib- •und it inge of jrady's iround could com- :ion to them- deep 3y lis- ppeal. I unc- 77//-; ORATOR 77 tion to themselves for never making a mistake, who regard their stupid "idividualities with undisturbed com- placency because they never invest in patents, or read poetry., or buy books could not keep their slow moving blood from getting into a quicker movement when the notes of Grady's music came up aganist their diminutive spirits. III. To be a great orator it is necessary to have a clear, distinct message to ut- ter. There was hidden in the life of Henry W. Grady the detentions and suggestions of a glad literature. It was an original quotation fron. an eternal source that managed to get itself into the syntax and prosody of orations which kindled a new. wide and kindly hght m twenty years of solemn time. Never did message from the illimita- ble sources of thought and life come to ^m 78 UEXRY ll\ URADV ^ lU men at a more ()|)portune moment. The section which j^^ave (irady birth had been (hsorj^^anized and dismantled by the conllicts of war. The Southern people were poor and downhearted, oppressed by the burden of defeat, and faced by the complications of nntried problems. The sun of the Southern re- public, which promised so much in its rising effulgence, had just gone down. The afterglow arising from the sense of honor unsullied, and from the assur- ance of duty faithfully performed, kept, it is true, the horizon of the sinking confederacy red for a long time after the echo of the last gun had died away. But the brilliant display of pink bars of cloud, and orange flush of haze, shot into the western sky of the failing Southern republic from the heroism of Jackson and the courage of Lee, and the sacrifice of brave men and the de- votion of tender women, could not keep THE ORATOR 79 the shadow lines from falling across the pageantry of glorious color. Around the afterglow of vcrmillion and purple and green, there was a fringe of night which threatened, inch by inch, to close in a curtain of chirk- ness. At a time like this, Grady began to find in the folds of his glowing young h'fe the alphabet of the doctrine of hope. Preliminary lessons from the hterature of his mission he began to get. He was to call the attention of the Southern people fnjm the after- glow of the sinking Confederacy, with its sad beauty of reminiscence and de- parting vision. He had seen the red streaks of a dawn which betokened the interior splendors of a grander day. Up the Eastern horizon he saw arising the wondrous foregleams of a great future. Under the stimulus of this light from the frontiers of new time, the letters in 80 IIEXRY ir. GRADY his living' spirit began to gather them- selves into words, and the words into sentences, and tlie sentences to get filled with a meaning it became the passion of his life to make known. Phlegmatic, low-keyed people, com- ing in contact with the boundless op- timism of Grady, said he was visionary, and that his enterprises would not suc- ceed. That class of men who are too stupid to think and too cowardly to get out of the beaten track, and too stingy to spend a cent on a promising experiment, always predict failure to the originality that dares to live and breathe under the burning sun. They would expect the honeysuckles to fail because they are so gay, and happy, and red, were they not assured by pre- cedent, the only logic they compre- hend, that they have been blooming for ages. While wise and conservative and I 7///f OR A TON 8t thoin- Is into to f^ct le tliu n. , coin- ss op- 3nary, )t siic- arc dly to d too nisin«( ire to 2 and They ;o fail appy. 1 pre- npre- •ming and slow men were rin/-inf( the chan^'es on the doctrine that the South was get- ting poorer and poorer every day, Grady with his orations and editorials was waking up his section and bringing a new invoice of blood to the hearts of her people. IV. In 1889 he was invited to deliver an address upon the occasion of the New England dinner in New York, on " The New South. " The surroundings were complicated. Demonstrations in honor of Jefferson Davis had been credited to the remains of the spirit of rebellion. How the South could honor its living heroes, and cover with flow- ers the graves of its sleeping dead, and yet be loyal to the liag, and in sym- pathy with the Union, was not under- stood. The crossing of swords by editors of 82 ///wWv'l' //: GRADY i! vX different sections had kept the air full of nnsunderstandin^j^s and misinterpre- tation.s. Thus to be called to speak of the South to such a company, and under such conditions, while an honor, was attended with j^rave perils. Mr. Grady reco^mized the delicacy of ttie position, and accepted the responsi- bility. H" had li\c(l lon<; enou<;h to lorni for himself a conception of the South. He understood her resources, the hearts, and motives, of her people. He had imbibed from her genial skies, and learned from her lovin^^ sons, and cau;;ht from her suffering and her trials lessons which went to make the con- ception complete. It was not over- drawn; it was net unfair. It was such a conception of the South as squared with the facts. This conception he was not to chisel into cold, unfeeling marble, but was to throw it out into \ air full terpre- 3cak of y, and honor, iMr. jf the ponsi" i^h to )f the urccs, :iople. skies, ;, and trials con- over- such lared n he eling into T/y/'S ORATOR 83 Northern thought, and to make it liv- entire and complete in Northern hearts. His traditions, his instincts, his train- ing, came to his help. His exquisite taste and boundless charity guided him. 1 he mistake of a word or of an insin- uation would have been fatal. He accomplished his work like a prince. He embodied his conception in North- ern semiment and left it to live and work in Northern convictions. It sensibly and perceptibly moved the sections nearer together. It thawed out much coldness, and inaugurated a better day. The gulf stream hugged in mid- winter New England's ice-bound coasts. The warm winds from its waters soft- ened and scattered the blizzards that rushed over New England's hills. It was a speech of twenty minutes in length, but it did more to unite the North and the South than all the ora- \. si f: ■' f ,'r ^ 64 HENRY IV. GRADY tions of politicians and discussions of editors that had occupied pubhc atten- tion since the war. Mr. Grady believed that " Hate and mistrust are the children of blind- ness. Could North and South but see one an- other, 'twere well ! Knowledge is sympathy, charity, kindness. Ignorance only is maker of heh. Could we but gaze for an hour, for a minute, Deep in each other's unfaltering eyes, Love were begun — for that look would be- gin it- Born in the flash of a mighty surprise. * * -x- * * * Then should we, growing in strength and in sweetness, Fusing to one indivisible Soul, Dazzle the world with a splendid complete- ness, Mightily single, iunnovably whole." It was the speech in which Mr. Grady j^ave the first national display of brilliant imagery from the boundless resources of his illuminated spirit. Upon that occasion he was like an animated Aurora with the variation? of a )' t THE ORATOR 85 an- iMr. )lay lless Irit. an luminous sunset, and managed in twen- ty minutes to bathe the whole nation in splendid light. Never did light in contact with cloud and water and dust, produce a better twenty minutes display than did the light of Grady's oration in contact with the sorrows and disappointments and achievements and hopes of South- ern history, throw out before the brilliant company that make up the New England society in New York on that night. That was the time we all went to the sacred altar of the Re- public to repent of our national sins, and to pledge ourselves to higher think- ing, sweeter feeling and grander action. The last great speech Mr. Grady ever delivered was in Boston. It was upon the occasion of a banquet given by the merchants of that city. He was asked to discuss the race problem. His former addresses and work had come to the attention of the republic. \\ \ 1 ! 1 'v ■i 1 ■ i 80 HENRY IV. GRADY He was the acknowledged leader of the South. What he said was insured a hearing and what he wrote a reading. He was to speak on a subject less un- derstood and more often treated than any in our social life. A theme hack- neyed and old, but a theme ever new, because coming up in so many forms, and charged with interests so peculiar and relations so difficult of adjustment. He was to speak in the home of Sum- ner and Phillips, and under the shadow of Fanuel Hall. He was to be just to the South, fair to a weak and be- lated race, and true to the facts, from which conclusions had been drawn so diverse. He had a conception of the colored race, and a solution for the colored problem. It was not to be settled by law, or by force, or by editorials, written at a distance from the South, but by love. He was a true and tried friend of the ader of insured eading. ess un- ?d than 3 hack- er new, forms, Peculiar 5tment. f Sum- shadow be just nd be- s, from a.wn so of the or the law, or m at a y love. of the THE ORATOR ^7 colored people. He had been petted and nursed when a child by a colored ^namma. He had been m.lted by thcir songs and charm.^ \\ <^ ^ c> ,<' -b v^ f^ J^^ 4hr y. w ^ ' 94 //EXRY n: GRADY ;\'i I into an occidental circle as large as half the whole round sky. It was the song of the sun, seemingly raised to cele- brate the departure of that orb to the shores of other lands. The valley with its maguey plantations, the city with its distant spires, and the rim of the surrounding mountains were literally baptized in the waves of the glorious music played by the sinking day. Po- pocatepetl with white head 18,000 feet above sea level, blushed, as if agitated by the pleasant suspicion that the whole chorub vvas a love song sent by the sun to her willing heart. The elements in Grady's spirit were so rarified and combined after the pro- visions of some fresh formula, that when the light from behind the sunlight fell on them only the bright colors were thrown back and wheeled into a circle of luminous splendor about his throb- bing life. I have seen people stop to IP' THE MAN 05 were look at him as he moved with gladsome swing and straight, vigorous step along the street, as they would stop to ob- serve some striking phenomenon of na- ture. There was a perpetual charm about his personality that could be wciked out by no science. It was caused by the play of light from some unseen source upon the elements of his mar- velous spirit. By the magnetism of his perL>"h Jiiy, by the impact of his spirit, by the warmth of his thought, he was capable of raising men to a very high degree of social temperature. It was in this way he got so much from them for the public good. He lifted them with all they had to the point where they glowed and radiated. Money was released from the gravity of selfishness which keeps it generally so close to the ground, till it circled around like feathers in the wind. Thus 00 HENRY W, GRADV he was capable of astonishing!^ feats. At one time he raised seventy or eighty thousand dollars from the public-spir- ited men of his native city, to erect the finest Young Men's Christian Associa- tion building that stands in the South- ern States. To have carried men as high as he did above the common lev- els of ordinary human life, for the pur- pose of helping forward great com- mercial and moral enterprises, would have been to sacrifice their confidence, had it not been for the fact that it was known that Grady did not know what selfishness meant. He was al- ways oblivious to his own monetary in- terests. The money he had was sub- ject to every good cause. The giving point was not an altitude to which he climbed occasionally. It constituted the permanent tableland of his life. It is well known that meat and bread will not keep one alive unless he feeds fi: feats. 5r eighty )Iic-spir- Jrect the f\ssocia- South- rnen as on lev- thepur- t com- would idence, that it know ^'as al- ary in- s sub- giving ch he ituted fe. bread feeds THE MAN 97 also on the atmosphere. There was in Grady, as there is within us all, a spirit that called for an equation with finer food than could be made with bread and meat and air. He fed on the effluence of an eternal intelligence, and partook of sentiments from the un^ seen sources of unfailing emotion. Grady's career was the unwinding of the skein of thought deposited in the possibilities of his life, and the drama of his existence was the recovery of the incidents and events that floated in the love which gave him to the world. Wordsworth says, " Our birth is a forgetting, the soul that rises with us, ou- life star hath had elsewhere its set- ting, and Cometh from afar; we come from God, who is our home, and we forget the glories we have known, and that imperial palace whence we come. " Grady kept up commerce with the i V f m f i 08 HENRY IV. GRADY homelands, and did not forget the imperial pa lace whence we come ; hence the sufferings of the poor touched him to tears. He recognized his kinship to all God's children. "'Some find their natural selves, and only then In furloughs of divine escape from men. Hut he basked and bourj;eoned in copartnery Companionship, and opened windowed glee." He heard the cry of the babe of Bethlehem across the centuries, and this cry awakened within him emotion and sympathy for all God's needy ones on earth. II. He was concerned about all things relating to human life, its business, its loves, its fears, its hopes. Byron said that his college friends, after they had completed their studies, went about the world wearing monstrous masks, as lawyers, soldiers, parsons and the ii get the 3; hence led him kinship ind only 211, partnery d glee." abe of js, and motion \y ones things 2SS, its >n said jy had about lasks, d the THE MAX yj) iike. Mr. Grady looked through so- cial distinctions and official decorations to the hearts and interests beneath them. A newsboy's tale of sorrow held him, as completely as the movements of senators. As an editor and an ora- tor he sought to advance public inter- ests and social well being, as a n,an his work was with individuals. He was related by some act of kindness to every individual in his native state. He was constantly speaking a word or wntmg a telegram about individuals when they had no thought of it. He saweverything and felt everything that concerned the people about him Whether the^- were lawyers, or doctors or engmeers. or bootblacks, if he came to know them, they were ever after carried in his thought. His heart and his pocket-book were open, the one to ^,,^ sympathy, the i: n i ;! 41 1' i 100 IfEXRY n: GRADY other Iiclp. During his hist days, when dtihrious, he was often talking of helping some poor fellow to get a start. He would say, " I'll give twenty-five dollars, and this one will give so much, and thus we will get him on his feet again." He had a deeply religious nature, and strong faith in God. On a visit to his mother he told her he wanted to be a boy again. She toasted cheese for him in the corner and tucked the cover around him at night, and breathed to heaven a prayer for him as she had over her little boy in the years departed. She carried him to Sunday-school, and when the children sang, " Shall we gather at the river?" he covered his face in both his hands and cried like a child. When his mother came to see him in his last illness, the first words i'l days, talking to get I give le will ill get ature, Id her She orner in at ;n a ■ her She and 1 we I his ke a • see ords THE MAN ,01 he said to her was, " Mother, my feet are in the river." When he was at the University of Virginia, he went with a friend to the home of Thomas Jefferson. Having reached the home of the great Jeffer- son, a party of young men and women who had preceded them were engaged "^ a dance. His friend proposed that they each get a partner and join in the dance. Mr. Grady said, " Do yo„ know that this was the hon,o of the greatest man who,,, this country has ever produced ' He was not only the author of the Declaration of In.lependence, hut he was ConRressnian, Governor. I-o,ei.rn Minister, Secretary of State. Vice- President and President of the United States; and it does seem to „,e a dese- cration to sing and dance in thought- Jess revelry over the ashes of the Sage of Monticello. " ( I 1 1 .,^'! 102 IlEXRY IV. GRADY His friend went into the room to get his partner, while Mr. Grady walked under the stars to coinniune with the spirit of the ^Meat man who had made that a (lassie spot in America. To stand with uncovered head on Bunker Hill, out of respect to the memory of those who had made that mound memorable, was the most natural thing in the world for him to do. He loved his country- men. He had a nature that had been touched and made soft and universal by the religion of Him who loved all men. This it was that enabled him to hold in his hand the key that promised to bring the lightnings from the dark clouds of misunderstanding above our political sky, harmless to the ground. An insight into the repose and beauty of Mr. Grady's spirit may be had by the following short editorial from his pen written for his paper, The Atlanta Constitution, exactly a year before the n THE MAN ,03 'l-'y of his burial. The subject was. " A Perfect Christmas Day." " No man or woman now hvinfj will see again such a Christmas day as the one which closed yesterday, when the dy.n« sun piled the western skies with gold and purple. A winter day it was shot to the core with sunshine. \t was enchanting to walk abroad in its prodigal beauty, to breathe its eli.xir to reach out the hands and plunge them open fingered through its pulsing waves of warmth and freshness It was June and November welded and fused into a perfect glory that held the sunshine and snow beneath tender and splendid skies. To have winnowed such a day from the teeming winter was to have found an odorous peach on a bough whipped in the storms of wmter. One caught the musk of yel- low grain, the flavor of ripening nuts the fragrance of strawberries, the ex' 104 HENRY \V. GRADY i. I \}A quisite odor of violets, the aroma of all seasons in the wonderful day. The hum of bees underrode the whistling winf^s of wild ^eese flying southward. The lire slept in drowsing; grates while the people marvelinj^ out-doors watched the south winds woo the roses and the lilies. " Truly it was a day of days. Amidst its riotous luxury surely life was worth living to hold up the head and breathe it in as thirsting men drink water. To put every sense on its gracious excel- lence, to throw the hands wide apart and hug whole armfuls of the day close to the heart till the heart itself is en- raptured and illumined. God's bene- diction came down with the day slow dropping from the skies. God's smile was its light and all through and through its supernal beauty and still- ness unspoken but appealing to every heart and sanctifying every soul, was THE MAN 105 his invocation and promise. ' Peace on earth, ^^ood will to men.' " As of William of Orange, it may be said of Mr. Grady when he died, " The little children cried in the streets." ••In the wild .uitiiniu weather, when the rain was on the sta, And tiie Ijou^hs s()l)hed togetiier, Death came and spoke to nie: 'Those red dr()j)s of thy heart I have come to take fn^m thee; As the storm sheds the rose, so thy love shall broken l)e,* Said Death to me. •'Then I stood strai^dit and fearless while the rain was in the wave, And I si)ake low and tearless: 'When thou hast made my j^rave, Those red drops from my heart then thou shalt surely have; But the rose keeps its bloom, as I my love will save All for my grave.' " In the wild autumn weather a dread sword slipped from its sheath; While the boughs sobbed together, I fought a fight with Death, 100 HENRY \V. GRADY And I vanquished him with prayer, and I van- (liiishcd him hy faith; Now tlie siwnmer air is sweet with tlie rose's fragrant hrcatli That conquered Death." It' Finis. I* ticl I van- le rose's