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_From the “Darien Timber Gazette.”_
SELDOM has the nation’s heart been so saddened as by the news of Henry
W. Grady’s death. Henry W. Grady, although comparatively young, has
conquered this vast continent—east and west, north and south—and his
many victories have been bloodless. He has truly demonstrated that the
pen is mightier than the sword. An intellect exceptionally brilliant, an
indomitable courage, a judgment keen, clear and cool, a character
unspotted and unassailable—these are the weapons with which Henry W.
Grady captured the nation.
The South loves him for his unflinching devotion to its interests; the
North admires him for the conservatism which always characterized his
political actions. The brilliancy of his intellect all admit. We venture
to say that there lives not a man in the United States to-day whose
death would be more sincerely or more universally mourned.
That a career so unusually promising should have been so suddenly cut
off is sad indeed—sad especially for the South, whose claims he so ably
advocated and so successfully furthured. The severing of the still more
tender ties between wife and husband, mother and son, while in the youth
of his glory, adds another gloomy chapter to the death of Southland’s
most patriotic and brilliant son. Millions will bow their heads in grief
with the loving wife and devoted mother.
We read and re-read the words of Henry W. Grady’s last speech with a
strange fascination. They are like the last notes of the dying swan and
will doubtless have much more weight under the sad circumstances. He has
literally laid down his life that the colored man might enjoy his in
peace and prosperity.
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