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_From the “Cincinnati Times-Star.”_
THE loss which the _Daily Constitution_ sustains in the death of Mr.
Grady is not a loss to a newspaper company only; it is a loss to
Atlanta, to Georgia, to the whole South. Mr. Grady belonged to a new era
of things south of the Ohio River. He was never found looking over his
shoulder in order to keep in sympathy with the people among whom he had
always lived. He was more than abreast of the times in the South, he
kept a little in advance, and his spirit was rapidly becoming
contagious. He wasted no time sighing over the past, he was getting all
there is of life in the present and preparing for greater things for
himself and the South in the future. His life expectancy was great, for
though already of national reputation he had not yet reached his prime.
There was much of the antithetical in the lives of the two
representative Southern men who have but just passed away. The one lived
in the past, the other in the future. The one saw but little hope for
Southern people because the “cause” was “lost,” the other believed in a
mightier empire still because the Union was preserved. The one, full of
years, had finished his course, which had been full of mistakes. The
other had not only kept the faith, but had barely entered upon a course
that was full of promise. The one was the ashes of the past, the other,
like the orange-tree of his own sunny clime, had the ripe fruit of the
present and the bud of the future. The death of the one was long since
discounted, the death of the other comes like a sudden calamity in a
happy Christmas home. The North joins the South to-day in mourning for
Grady.
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