I am one among the thousands who loved him, and I stand with the
millions who lament his death.
I loved him in the promise of his glowing youth, when, across my
boyish vision he walked with winning grace, from easy effort to
success. I loved him in the flush of splendid manhood when a
Nation hung upon his words—and now, with the dross of human
friendship smitten in my soul—I love him best of all as he lies
yonder under the December skies, with face as tranquil and with
smile as sweet as patrial ever wore.
In this sweet and solemn hour all the rare and kindly adjectives
that blossomed in the shining pathway of his pen, seem to have
come from every quarter of the continent to lay themselves in
loving tribute at their master’s feet; but rich as the music
that they bring, all the cadences of our eulogy
Sigh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.
And here to-day, within this hall glorified by the echoes of his
eloquence, standing to answer the impulse of my heart in the
roll-call of his friends, and stricken with my emptiness of
words, I know that, when the finger of God touched his eyelids
into sleep, there gathered a silence upon the only lips that
could weave the sunbright story of his days, or mete sufficient
eulogy to the incomparable richness of his life.
I agree with Patrick Collins that he was the most brilliant son
of this Republic. If the annals of these times are told with
truth, they will give him place as the phenomenon of his period,
the Admirable Crichton of the age in which he lived. No
eloquence has equaled his since Sargent Prentiss faded from the
earth. No pen has plowed such noble furrow in his country’s
fallow fields since the wrist of Horace Greeley rested; no age
of the Republic has witnessed such marvelous conjunction of a
magical pen with the velvet splendor of a mellow tongue, and
although the warlike rival of these wondrous forces never rose
within his life, it is writ of all his living, that the noble
fires of his genius were lighted in his boyhood from the gleam
that died upon his father’s sword.
I have loved to follow, and I love to follow now the pathway of
that diamond pen as it flashed like an inspiration over every
phase of life in Georgia. It touched the sick body of a desolate
and despairing agriculture with the impulse of a better method,
and the farmer, catching the glow of promise in his words, left
off sighing and went to singing in his fields, until at last the
better day has come, and as the sunshine melts into his harvests
with the tender rain, the heart of humanity is glad in his hope
and the glow on his fields seems the smile of the Lord. Its
brave point went with cheerful prophecy and engaging manliness
into the ranks of toil, until the workman at his anvil felt the
dignity of labor pulse the somber routine of the hours, and the
curse of Adam softening in the faith of silver sentences, became
the blessing and the comfort of his days. Into the era of
practical politics it dashed with the grace of an earlier
chivalry, and in an age of pushing and unseemly scramble, it
woke the spirit of a loftier sentiment, while around the glow of
splendid narrative and the charm of entrancing plea there grew a
goodlier company of youth, linked to the Republic’s nobler
legends and holding fast that generous loyalty which builds the
highest bulwark of the State.
First of all the instruments which fitted his genius to
expression was this radiant pen. Long after it had blazed his
way to eminence and usefulness, he waked the power of that
surpassing oratory which has bettered all the sentiment of his
country and enriched the ripe vocabulary of the world. Nothing
in the history of human speech will equal the stately steppings
of his eloquence into glory. In a single night he caught the
heart of the country into its warm embrace, and leaped from a
banquet revelry into national fame. It is, at last, the crowning
evidence of his genius, that he held to the end, unbroken, the
high fame so easily won, and sweeping from triumph unto triumph,
with not one leaf of his laurels withered by time or staled by
circumstance, died on yesterday—the foremost orator of all the
world.
It is marvelous, past all telling how he caught the heart of the
country in the fervid glow of his own! All the forces of our
statesmanship have not prevailed for union like the ringing
speeches of this bright, magnetic man. His eloquence was the
electric current over which the positive and negative poles of
American sentiment were rushing to a warm embrace. It was the
transparent medium through which the bleared eyes of sections
were learning to see each other clearer and to love each other
better. He was melting bitterness in the warmth of his patrial
sympathies, sections were being linked in the logic of his
liquid sentences, and when he died he was literally loving a
Nation into peace.
Fit and dramatic climax to a glorious mission, that he should
have lived to carry the South’s last and greatest message to the
center of the Nation’s culture, and then, with the gracious
answer to his transcendent service locked in his loyal heart,
come home to die among the people he had served! Fitter still,
that, as he walked in final triumph through the streets of his
beloved city, he should have caught upon his kingly head that
wreath of Southern roses—richer jewels than Victoria
wears—plucked by the hands of Georgia women, borne by the hands
of Georgia men, and flung about him with a loving tenderness
that crowned him for his burial, that, in the unspeakable
fragrance of Georgia’s full and sweet approval, he might “draw
the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant
dreams.”
If I should seek to touch the core of all his greatness, I would
lay my hand upon his heart. I should speak of his humanity—his
almost inspired sympathies, his sweet philanthropy and the noble
heartfulness that ran like a silver current through his life.
His heart was the furnace where he fashioned all his glowing
speech. Love was the current that sent his golden sentences
pulsing through the world, and in the honest throb of human
sympathies he found the anchor that held him steadfast to all
things great and true. He was the incarnate triumph of a
heartful man.
I thank God, as I stand above my buried friend, that there is
not one ignoble memory in all the shining pathway of his fame!
In all the glorious gifts that God Almighty gave him, not one
was ever bent to willing service in unworthy cause. He lived to
make the world about him better. With all his splendid might he
helped to build a happier, heartier and more wholesome sentiment
among his kind. And in fondness, mixed with reverence, I believe
that the Christ of Calvary, who died for men, has found a
welcome sweet for one who fleshed within his person the golden
spirit of the New Commandment and spent his powers in glorious
living for his race.
O brilliant and incomparable Grady! We lay for a season thy
precious dust beneath the soil that bore and cherished thee, but
we fling back against all our brightening skies the thoughtless
speech that calls thee dead! God reigns and his purpose lives,
and although these brave lips are silent here, the seeds sown in
this incarnate eloquence will sprinkle patriots through the
years to come, and perpetuate thy living in a race of nobler
men!
But all our words are empty, and they mock the air. If we would
speak the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within this
city that he loved, a monument tall as his services, and noble
as the place he filled. Let every Georgian lend a hand, and as
it rises to confront in majesty his darkened home, let the widow
who weeps there be told that every stone that makes it has been
sawn from the solid prosperity that he builded, and that the
light which plays upon its summit is, in afterglow, the sunshine
that he brought into the world.
And for the rest—silence. The sweetest thing about his funeral
was that no sound broke the stillness, save the reading of the
Scriptures and the melody of music. No fire that can be kindled
upon the altar of speech can relume the radiant spark that
perished yesterday. No blaze born in all our eulogy can burn
beside the sunlight of his useful life. After all there is
nothing grander than such living.
I have seen the light that gleamed at midnight from the
headlight of some giant engine rushing onward through the
darkness, heedless of opposition, fearless of danger, and I
thought it was grand. I have seen the light come over the
eastern hills in glory, driving the lazy darkness like mist
before a sea-born gale, till leaf and tree, and blade of grass
glittered in the myriad diamonds of the morning ray; and I
thought it was grand.
I have seen the light that leaped at midnight athwart the
storm-swept sky, shivering over chaotic clouds, mid howling
winds, till cloud and darkness and the shadow-haunted earth
flashed into mid-day splendor, and I knew it was grand. But the
grandest thing, next to the radiance that flows from the
Almighty Throne, is the light of a noble and beautiful life,
wrapping itself in benediction ’round the destinies of men, and
finding its home in the blessed bosom of the Everlasting God!