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_From the “Baxley Banner.”_
A GREAT soul has passed away.
After a life brief but brilliant, he is lost to the country that loved
and honored him, and which his lofty eloquence and pure patriotism have
illustrated and adorned.
As the lightning that comes out of the South, and flashes from horizon
to horizon, so was his short life in its bright, swift passage,
illuminating the earth.
In the death of Henry Grady, his city, his State, the South, the whole
country has suffered a great loss. His voice was ever the ringing,
stirring herald-tones that announced the promise of fairer days and a
happier people. He was no low-browed, latter-day prophet of evil; but
preached here and everywhere the new and bright evangel of hope. He was
the voice of his city, heard ringing through Georgia and the Union; the
voice of his State, heard clarion-like from ocean to ocean, and the
golden-mouthed messenger from the South to the North, proclaiming a
brotherhood of love that the shock of war had not destroyed. And thus
his death will be mourned, not in Atlanta or in Georgia only, but
wherever an American heart is, that heart will mourn his death.
Particularly is Mr. Grady’s death a loss to journalism. He stood the
peer of any in the world, and was the greatest journalist in the South.
His pen was as eloquent as his tongue, and from the closet as well as
from the platform his words came with vivifying power, refreshing and
inspiring.
Death struck him down from the lofty pinnacle of fame, to which his
eloquence had so swiftly upborne him. A young man, he had already
reached a height that would have dazzled a weaker soul, and he has
fallen in the midst of his triumph, while yet the plaudits of tens of
thousands from every part of this country rang fainter and fainter on
his dying ear. It was something worth to have such heartfelt
approbations sounding around him as he sunk to his last sleep. It was
the crowning of a life well lived, and spent with lavish patriotism for
his country’s weal.
He burned his life to the socket like a swift devouring flame. His
energy was tremendous, and almost feverish in its eagerness to do
something worth the doing. He returned to his city and his home with
death upon him, stricken even in his great triumph. The glow of fever
followed hard upon the glow of victory, and so, after a brief and
burning life—a life crowded thick with triumphs, “God’s finger touched
him and he slept”—the sleep He giveth to His beloved.
Of his private life all may speak. We know it well. It is familiar to us
all as household words, though his charity and his kindness were without
ostentation. He was generous without stint, and whether it was as the
boy making up a fund to buy a poor schoolmate a handsome suit to
graduate in, or as the man lending a helping hand to lift or guide the
needy, self was forgotten in his kindness to others. In thousands of
homes he will be
Named softly as the household name
Of one whom God has taken.
His city, his State, and his country will build for him a shaft, but his
greatest monument will be in the hearts that mourn his death.
A great and loving soul has passed.
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