GRIEF TEMPERS TO-DAY’S JOY.
From the “Austin, Tex., Statesman.”
When an old man, full of years, and smitten with the decrepitude they bring, goes down to the grave, the world, though saddened, bows its acquiescence. It is recognized that lonely journey is a thing foredoomed from the foundation of the world—it is the way of all things mortal. But when a young man, full of the vigor of a sturdy life growing into its prime, is suddenly stricken from the number of the quick, a nation is startled and, resentful of the stroke, would rebel, but that such decrees come from a Power that earth cannot reach, and which, though working beyond the ken of fallible understanding, yet doeth all things well.
For the second time within the past two weeks the South has been called upon to mourn the demise of a chosen and well-beloved son. The two men may be classified according to an analysis first of all instituted by him whose funeral to-day takes place in Atlanta. Jefferson Davis was typical of the Old South—Henry W. Grady of the New. And by this we mean not that the South has put away those things that, as a chosen and proud people, they have cherished since first there was a State government in the South. They have the same noble type of manhood, the same chivalrous ambitions, the same love of home and state and country, they are as determined in purpose, as unswerving in the application of principle. But what is meant is that the material conditions of the South have changed, the economics of an empire of territory have been radically altered. Not only has a new class of field labor taken the place of the long-accustomed slave help, but industries unknown in the South before the war have invaded our fair lands, and the rush and whir of manufactories are all around us. It is in this that the South has changed. Jefferson Davis, in his declining years ushered into the reign of peace, was never truly identified with the actualities of the living present, in the sense of a man who, from the present, was for himself carving out a future. His life was past, and for him the past contained the most of earthly life—his was an existence of history, not of activity—he was the personification of the Old South.
Mr. Grady was too young to have participated in the Civil War. He was then but a boy, and has grown into manhood and power since the time when the issues that gave birth to that war were settled. His has been a life of the realistic present. He brought to a study of the changes that were going on around him a keenly perceptive and a well-trained mind—he studied the problems that surrounded him thoroughly and conscientiously, and his conclusions were almost invariably the soundest. He realized the importance and responsibility of his position as the editor of a widely circulating newspaper, and he was unfaltering in his zeal to discharge his every duty with credit to himself and profit to his people. He was the champion of the Southern people through the columns of his paper and upon the rostrum—and when he fell beneath the unexpected stroke of the grim reaper, the South lost a true and valiant friend, the ablest defender with pen and word retort this generation has known.
As two weeks ago the South bowed in sorrow over the last leaf that had fluttered down from the tree of the past, so to-day, as the mortal remains of Henry W. Grady are lowered into the tomb, she should cease from the merriment of the gladsome holiday season, and drop a tear upon the grave of him who, though so young in years, had in such brilliant paragraphs bidden defiance to ancient prejudice, scoffed at partisan bigotry, and proudly invited the closest scrutiny and criticism of the South. That South in him has lost a warm-hearted friend whom manhood bids us mourn.