Ladies and Gentlemen: The lightning brought this message to
Atlanta:
“Henry Grady spends Christmas in heaven.”
Who doubts it? What creature whom the Creator has loved enough
to suffer him to hold a Christian’s faith will question that he
is at this moment in company with the good and great and
virtuous who have preceded him? I looked upon his face, the
pitifulness of death sealed upon it, and as I turned away with
swimming eyes, I saw hidden in a mass of flowers that loving
hands had placed by his side, these words:
O, stainless gentleman!
True man, true hero, true philanthropist!
Thy name was “Great Heart,” honor was thy shield,
Thy golden motto, “Duty without fear!”
And the fragrant breath around him seemed vocal with triumphant
voices, singing, “Reward without stint!” In Athens, the home of
his boyhood, a few months ago, he said, “I am going to
Sunday-school. I want to feel that I am a boy again.” When
seated there the children sang, “Shall we gather at the river?”
and he sank his face in both his hands, and tears flooded
through his fingers. O, “Great Heart,” we know that when your
eyes closed upon the weariness of the terrestrial, they opened
fearless upon the glories of the celestial. I fancy Mr. Hill
sought him without delay, fixing upon him the earnest,
penetrating glance we know so well, but out of which the pained
seriousness has been washed away forever, exclaiming, “Why,
Henry! You? And so soon! Welcome home to our Father’s house!”
Judge Lochrane has doubtless already repaired to his side and
regaled him with a bit of celestial humor that set the seraphs
ashout with laughter. Perhaps he has encountered by this time
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Davis with arms interlocked, their
differences all adjusted, in wider wisdom, and has been startled
to hear them say: “We were but just now speaking of you and of
the future destiny of the American Republic. Mr. Lincoln had
just remarked that the United States were on the threshold of a
more cordial understanding and a closer union than ever before,
and Mr. Davis has just quoted your prophetic invocation: ‘Let us
resolve to crown the miracles of the 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!’”
Oh, that he who alone knew how to describe “a perfect
Christmas day,” could come back to his beloved Atlanta and
make it all clear to us—the recognitions, the employments, the
conversations, the blessedness of the redeemed. What sort of
goblet of immortal nectar—of commingled “musk of yellow grain,
of flavor of ripening fruits, fragrance of strawberries,
exquisite odor of violets, aroma of all seasons” of the
celestial year, did the angels brew out of the material of
yesterday to pledge the never-ending fellowships of Heaven in?
What sort of hug of odorous shine did Henry get armsful of
yesterday, when he flung his hands wide apart in the presence
of that Being whom he was wont to call always in his reverent
speech “the Lord God Almighty.”
Oh, well enough for Henry! but for us only the pain of it all,
the bitter pain. I look abroad and Atlanta’s business men seem
grown suddenly older. The cry of the newsboys—“Paper, sir?”—is
almost a sob. I went late at night into the _Constitution_
building and the editors’ faces were graver than they should be,
and the composing-room was heavy with suggestions of widowhood
and orphanage.
I went into a store Christmas eve (for Henry would not have the
children neglected) and the merchant couldn’t find anything he
sought for, and said, apologetically, “I haven’t had any sense
to-day.” The pity of it! We are bereft. Our city is desolate. We
had some great public enterprises in view, that is, Henry had,
and we were going to follow him, and overwork him, as usual.
We are disheartened—almost discouraged. Atlanta is so young and
fiery, almost fierce in her civic energy, and pulls so hard on
the reins. Who will drive for us now?
We will see more clearly after a little, when our grief is
calmer, but now as we see it through our tears, the face and
body of the times are out of joint.
I do not care, in this place and under present limitations, to
speak of his kittenish boyhood; of his idyllic home-life; of his
rollicsome and irresistible humor; of his sympathy and
prodigality of self-sacrifice; of his boundless love to his
fellow men; of his ability as a writer and super-eminence as an
orator; of his pride in Atlanta and services in aid of her
material progress; of his patriotic devotion to the South and to
the Union. I want to ask indulgence to say one thing, which, as
I believe, were he here to prescribe my course and dictate my
utterances, he would have me say. I want to say to noble men of
all parties, north and east and west, speaking here from Grady’s
bier, that the South is no more hostile to the Union than is New
England, and that her love, and sympathy, and desire to help the
dependent class in her midst is deeper, if possible, than the
treason of political agitators who seek to foment race prejudice
to secure party supremacy. “We pledge our lives, our property,
and our sacred honor,” that we will bring wisdom and humanity to
the solution of the grave problem in government which confronts
us, and that we “will carry in honor and peace to the end.” We
repeat again and again, in our sadness, with the sacredness of
our grief for his loss around us, the plea of Georgia’s son, for
patience, for confidence, for sympathy, for loyalty to the
Republic, devoid of suspicion and estrangement, against any
section.
We send greeting to generous New England. They loved him and we
love them for it. We have even forgiven them for being
Republicans. We throw his knightly and Christian gauntlet at
their feet. We challenge her business men, in the name of our
champion of the doctrine of the brotherhood of men and of
Americans, to the national glory-fields of the future—to
fraternal love that will forgive errors of judgment seven times,
and seventy times seven; and to a patriotic pride in and
devotion to every foot of the soil of our magnificent Republic,
that will brook no suspicions and no wrath in all her borders
except when directed against a foreign enemy.
* * * * *
Professor White’s address was delivered under very trying
conditions. He had been suffering from a severe headache all
morning and, in fact, he has been unwell for several days past.
During his speech he suffered painfully, and immediately at its
conclusion he was so much overcome as to be almost completely
prostrated. He was led from the stage to the office of Judge
Will Haight, where he remained until he recovered, leaving for
home later in the afternoon.
The address was delivered with pathos and emotion, and that part
which bore on his close relations with the dead man touched a
responsive chord in every heart in the vast audience that sat in
listening attention to the words of love.