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_From the “Philadelphia Telegraph.”_
THE country will be startled to learn of the death of Henry W. Grady. No
man within the past three years has come so suddenly before the American
people, occupying so large a share of interested attention not only in
the South but in the North. None has wielded a greater influence or made
for himself a higher place in the public regard. The career of Mr. Grady
reads like a romance. Like a true Georgian, he was born with the
instincts of his people developed to a marked degree, and his rise to a
position of honor and usefulness was certain, should his life be spared.
But like the average man, even in this country of free opportunities, he
had to fight his way over obstacles which would have discouraged if not
crushed out the spirit of a less courageous and indomitable man. He was
too young to take any part in the late great internal strife, but as a
bright-minded boy he emerged from that contest with vivid and bitter
memories, an orphan, his father having fallen beneath the “Stars and
Bars.” His young manhood, while not altogether clouded by poverty,
started him upon the battle of life without any special favoring
circumstances, and without the support of influential friends to do for
him in a measure what doubtless would gladly have been done could his
future have been foreseen. But he started out for himself, and in the
rugged school of experience was severely taught the lessons of
self-reliance and individual energy which were to prepare him for the
responsibilities of intellectual leadership amongst a people in a sadly
disorganized condition, who were groping in the dark, as it were,
seeking the light of prosperity. He never but for a short time left his
own State, and as his field of observation and work enlarged and his
influence extended, his love for it seemed to grow more intense. It
became with him, indeed, a passion that was always conspicuous, and upon
which he loved to dwell, with pen or tongue, and some of his tributes to
the Empire Commonwealth of the South, as he loved to call it, will
proudly be recorded by the future historian of the annals of the time.
It was as an active editor of the Atlanta _Constitution_ that Mr. Grady
found the sphere of labor in which he was to win high honor, and from
which he was to send out an influence measured only by the boundaries of
the South itself, if it did not extend, in fact, to the borders of the
nation. He wrote and spoke, when appearing in public, from a patriotic
and full heart. His utterances were those of a man deeply in love with
his country, and earnestly desirous of promoting her highest prosperity
and happiness. Some of his deliverances were prose poems that will be
read with delight by future generations of Southern youth. They came
forth flashing like meteors, doubtless to the astonishment of their
author himself, for he seemed to reach national prominence at a single
bound. There were times when Mr. Grady seemed to falter and slip aside
in discussing some of the burning questions of the hour, but this was
due to his great sympathy with his own people, his toleration of their
prejudices, and his desire to keep step with them and be one with them
throughout his work in their behalf. But he was an ardent young patriot,
a zealous and true friend of progress, and the New South will miss him
as it would miss no other man of the time. He set a brilliant example to
the younger men as well. He reached for and grasped with a hearty grip
the hand of the North in the spirit of true fraternity, and it is a
pathetic incident that the climax to his career should have been an
address in the very center of the advanced thought of New England. His
death seems almost tragic, and doubtless was indirectly, at least, due
to the immense pace at which he had been traveling within the past three
years; a victim of the prevailing American vice of intellectual men,
driving the machine at a furious rate, when suddenly the silver cord is
loosed, the golden bowl is broken, and the people of the Southland will
go mourning for one who ought, they will sadly think, to have been
spared them for many years, to help them work out their political,
industrial, and social salvation. The name of Henry W. Grady is sure of
an enduring and honored place in the history of the State of Georgia,
and in the annals of the public discussions in the American press,
during a time of great importance, of questions of vast concern to the
whole people.
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