A THOROUGHLY AMERICAN JOURNALIST.
From the “New York Herald.”
Mr. Grady’s death will be deeply and justly regretted all over the country. He had, though still a young man, made for himself a national reputation, and by his steadfast counsels for peace and good will, and by his intelligent devotion to the development of his State and of the South, had won the good will of North and South alike.
It is seldom that so good a journalist is at the same time so brilliant and effective an orator as Mr. Grady was. The reason probably is that when he spoke he had something to say, and that he was of so cheerful and hopeful a spirit that he was able to affect his hearers with his own optimism. In that he was a thorough American, for, as one of the shrewdest New Yorkers once said, “This is a bull country, and the bears have the wrong philosophy for the American people.”
For that training which made him not only a brilliant and successful, but, what is better, a broadly intelligent and useful journalist, the Herald claims a not inconsiderable share of credit, which Mr. Grady himself was accustomed to give it. The Herald was his early and best school. As a correspondent of this journal he first made his mark by the fearless accuracy of his reports of some exciting scenes in the reconstruction period. He showed in those days so keen an eye as an observer, united with such rapid and just judgment of the bearings of facts, that his reports in the Herald attracted general attention and were recognized freely, even by those whom they inconvenienced, as the clearest, the most truthful, and the most just reports made of those events. He was then still a very young man; but he quickly saw that the province of a newspaper, and of a reporter of events for it, is to tell the exact truth, to tell it simply and straightforwardly, and without fear, favor or prejudice. This is what he learned from his connection with the Herald, and this lesson he carried into his own able journal, the Atlanta Constitution.
It does not often happen that so young a man as Mr. Grady was makes so great and widespread a reputation, and this without any of the tricks of self-puffery which are the cheap resort of too many young men ambitious of fame, or what they mistake for fame—notoriety.
In Mr. Grady’s untimely death the country loses one of its foremost and most clear-headed journalists, and his State one of its most eminent and justly admired citizens.