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_From the “Birmingham, Mo., Chronicle.”_
THE CHRONICLE confesses to being a hero-worshiper. There is no trait in
the human heart more noble than that which applauds and commemorates the
feats of brains or arms done by our fellow-man. We confess the almost
holy veneration we feel for the heroes of song and story from the
beginning of tradition. Nimrod to Joseph and Moses to the Maccabees,
from Alexander to Cæsar, taking in the heroes of all nations from Cheops
to Napoleon and Wellington, Putnam, Sam Houston and Lee and Grant and
Lincoln, we do honor to them all.
So too do we worship the sages and orators. Whatever man the people
worship is worthy of a place in our Pantheon. The people are the best
judges of a man, and when the common people pay tribute to the worth of
any man well known to them, we are ready to lift our hats and
acknowledge his title to greatness. Any man who has the enthusiastic
admiration of his own people is worthy of any honor.
The South has many brilliant writers, but none of them have ever made
the columns of a newspaper glisten and glow and hold in magnetic
enchantment the mind of the reader as Henry Grady did. In his life-work
he was great, and there is none greater. His writings are worthy of a
place beside those of Greeley and Watterson, and Grady was still a young
man.
In the days gone by the South has sent many orators North to present
Southern thought to Northern hearers. Henry Clay, Jefferson Davis,
Robert Toombs and William L. Yancey all went before Grady was invited to
speak up there. There were never four greater orators in the world’s
history, and the story of their speeches has come down to us like music.
Yet in this latter day when oratory does not appeal to people as it used
to, when the busy world does not stop to read speeches, Grady went North
to speak. He was known to the North and had done nothing to challenge
the attention of the nation, yet his first speech at the North did catch
public attention most pleasantly. His second speech, delivered but a few
days ago, was the greatest effort of his life, and all the nations
listened to it and all the newspapers commented upon his utterances. His
speech was the equal of any oration ever delivered in America, and had
as much effect on public thought. No effort of Toombs or Yancey, even in
the days of public excitement, surpassed this last speech of Grady.
He deserves a place among the great men of America, and the South must
hold his memory in reverence. A broken shaft must be his monument, for
as sure as life had been spared him new honors were in store for this
young man. He had made his place in the world, and he was equal to any
call made upon him, and the people were learning to look to him as a
leader. Few such men are born, and too much honor cannot be done them.
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