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_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 thinker, able journalist and
model citizen. He will long be affectionately remembered in this city
and throughout the North.
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