III.
When in 1880 Mr. Grady bought a fourth interest in the Constitution, he gave up, for the most part, all outside newspaper work, and proceeded to devote his time and attention to his duties as managing editor, for which he was peculiarly well fitted. His methods were entirely his own. He borrowed from no one. Every movement he made in the field of journalism was stamped with the seal of his genius. He followed no precedent. He provided for every emergency as it arose, and some of his strokes of enterprise were as bold as they were startling. He had a rapid faculty of organization. This was shown on one occasion when he determined to print official reports of the returns of the congressional election in the seventh Georgia district. Great interest was felt in the result all over the State. An independent candidate was running against the Democratic nominee, and the campaign was one of the liveliest ever had in Georgia. Yet it is a district that lies in the mountains and winds around and over them. Ordinarily, it was sometimes a fortnight and frequently a month before the waiting newspapers and the public knew the official returns. Mr. Grady arranged for couriers with relays of horses at all the remote precincts, and the majority of them are remote from the lines of communication, and his orders to these were to spare neither horse-flesh nor money in getting the returns to the telegraph stations. At important points, he had placed members of the Constitution’s editorial and reportorial staff, who were to give the night couriers the assistance and directions which their interest and training would suggest. It was a tough piece of work, but all the details and plans had been so perfectly arranged that there was no miscarriage anywhere. One of the couriers rode forty miles over the mountains, fording rushing streams and galloping wildly over the rough roads. It was a rough job, but he had been selected by Mr. Grady especially for this piece of work; he was a tough man and he had tough horses under him, and he reached the telegraph station on time. This sort of thing was going on all over the district, and the next morning the whole State had the official returns. Other feats of modern newspaper enterprise have been more costly and as successful, but there is none that I can recall to mind showing a more comprehensive grasp of the situation or betraying a more daring spirit. It was a feat that appealed to the imagination, and therefore on the Napoleonic order.
And yet it is a singular fact that all his early journalistic ventures were in the nature of failures. The Rome Commercial, which he edited before he had attained his majority, was a bright paper, but not financially successful. Mr. Grady did some remarkably bold and brilliant work on the Atlanta Daily Herald, but it was expensive work, too, and the Herald died for lack of funds. Mr. Marion J. Verdery, in his admirable memorial of Mr. Grady, prepared for the Southern Society of New York (which I have taken the liberty of embodying in this volume) alludes to these failures of Mr. Grady, and a great many of his admirers have been mystified by them. I think the explanation is very simple. Mr. Grady was a new and a surprising element in the field of journalism, and his methods were beyond the comprehension of those who had grown gray watching the dull and commonplace politicians wielding their heavy pens as editors, and getting the news accidentally, if at all. There are a great many people in this world of ours—let us say the average people, in order to be mathematically exact—who have to be educated up to an appreciation of what is bright and beautiful, or bold and interesting. Some of Mr. Grady’s methods were new even in American journalism, and it is no wonder that his dashing experiments with the Daily Herald were failures, or that commonplace people regarded them as crude and reckless manifestations of a purpose and a desire to create a sensation. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that when the Daily Herald was running its special locomotives up and down the railroads of the State, the field of journalism in Atlanta was exceedingly narrow and provincial. The town had been rescued from the village shape, but neither its population nor its progress warranted the experiments on the Herald. They were mistakes of time and place, but they were not mistakes of conception and execution. They helped to educate and enlighten the public, and to give that dull, clumsy, and slow-moving body a taste of the spirit and purpose of modern journalism. The public liked the taste that it got, and smacked its lips over it and remembered it, and was always ready after that to respond promptly to the efforts of Mr. Grady to give it the work of his head and hands.
Bright and buoyant as he was, his early failures in journalism dazed and mortified him, but they did not leave him depressed. If he had his hours of depression and gloom he reserved them for himself. Even when all his resources had been exhausted, he was the same genial, witty, and appreciative companion, the center of attraction wherever he went. The year 1876 was the turning-point in his career in more ways than one. In the fall of that year, Captain Evan P. Howell bought a controlling interest in the Constitution. The day after the purchase was made, Captain Howell met Mr. Grady, who was on his way to the passenger station.
“I was just hunting for you,” said Captain Howell. “I want to have a talk with you.”
“Well, you’ll have to talk mighty fast,” said Mr. Grady. “Atlanta’s either too big for me, or I am too big for Atlanta.”
It turned out that the young editor, discomfited in Atlanta, but not discouraged, was on his way to Augusta to take charge of the Constitutionalist of that city. Captain Howell offered him a position at once, which was promptly accepted. There was no higgling or bargaining; the two men were intimate friends; there was something congenial in their humor, in their temperaments, and in a certain fine audacity in political affairs that made the two men invincible in Georgia politics from the day they began working together. Before the train that was to bear Mr. Grady to Augusta had steamed out of the station, he was on his way to the Constitution office to enter on his duties, and then and there practically began between the two men a partnership as intimate in its relations of both friendship and business as it was important on its bearings on the wonderful success of the Constitution and on the local history and politics of Georgia. It was an ideal partnership in many respects, and covered almost every movement, with one exception, that the two friends made. That exception was the prohibition campaign in Atlanta, that attracted such widespread attention throughout the country. Mr. Grady represented the prohibitionists and Captain Howell the anti-prohibitionists, and it was one of the most vigorous and amusing campaigns the town has ever witnessed. Each partner was the chief speaker of the side he represented, and neither lost an opportunity to tell a good-humored joke at the other’s expense. Thus, while the campaign was an earnest one in every respect, and even embittered to some small extent by the thoughtless utterances of those who seem to believe that moral issues can best be settled by a display of fanaticism, the tension was greatly relieved by the wit, the humor, the good nature and the good sense which the two leaders injected into the canvas.
The sentimental side of Mr. Grady’s character was more largely and more practically developed than that of any other person I have ever seen. In the great majority of cases sentiment develops into a sentimentality that is sometimes maudlin, sometimes officious, and frequently offensive. In most people it develops as the weakest and least attractive side of their character. It was the stronghold of Mr. Grady’s nature. It enveloped his whole career, to use Matthew Arnold’s phrase, in sweetness and light, and made his life a real dispensation in behalf of the lives of others. Wherever he found suffering and sorrow, no matter how humble—wherever he found misery, no matter how coarse and degraded, he struck hands with them then and there, and wrapped them about and strengthened them with his abundant sympathy. Until he could give them relief in some shape, he became their partner, and a very active and energetic partner he was. I have often thought that his words of courage and cheer, always given with a light and humorous touch to hide his own feelings, was worth more than the rich man’s grudging gift. It was this side of Mr. Grady’s nature that caused him to turn with such readiness to the festivities of Christmas. He was a great admirer of Charles Dickens, especially of that writer’s Christmas literature. It was an ideal season with Mr. Grady, and it presented itself to his mind less as a holiday time than as an opportunity to make others happy—the rich as well as the poor. He had a theory that the rich who have become poor by accident or misfortune suffer the stings of poverty more keenly than the poor who have always been poor, for the reason that they are not qualified to fight against conditions that are at once strange and crushing. Several Christmases ago, I had the pleasure of witnessing a little episode in which he illustrated his theory to his own satisfaction as well as to mine.
On that particular Christmas eve, there was living in Atlanta an old gentleman who had at one time been one of the leading citizens of the town. He had in fact been a powerful influence in the politics of the State, but the war swept away his possessions, and along with them all the conditions and surroundings that had enabled him to maintain himself comfortably. His misfortunes came on him when he was too old to begin the struggle with life anew with any reasonable hope of success. He gave way to a disposition that had been only convivial in his better days when he had hope and pride to sustain him, and he sank lower until he had nearly reached the gutter.
I joined Mr. Grady as he left the office, and we walked slowly down the street enjoying the kaleidoscopic view of the ever-shifting, ever hurrying crowd as it swept along the pavements. In all that restless and hastening throng there seemed to be but one man bent on no message of enjoyment or pleasure, and he was old and seedy-looking. He was gazing about him in an absent-minded way. The weather was not cold, but a disagreeable drizzle was falling.
“Yonder is the Judge,” said Mr. Grady, pointing to the seedy-looking old man. “Let’s go and see what he is going to have for Christmas.”
I found out long afterwards that the old man had long been a pensioner on Mr. Grady’s bounty, but there was nothing to suggest this in the way in which the young editor approached the Judge. His manner was the very perfection of cordiality and consideration, though there was just a touch of gentle humor in his bright eyes.
“It isn’t too early to wish you a merry Christmas, I hope,” said Mr. Grady, shaking hands with the old man.
“No, no,” replied the Judge, straightening himself up with dignity; “not at all. The same to you, my boy.”
“Well,” remarked Mr. Grady lightly, “you ought to be fixing up for it. I’m not as old as you are, and I’ve got lots of stirring around and shopping to do if I have any fun at home.”
The eyes of the Judge sought the ground. “No. I was—ah—just considering.” Then he looked up into the laughing but sympathetic eyes of the boyish young fellow, and his dignity sensibly relaxed. “I was only—ah—Grady, let me see you a moment.”
The two walked to the edge of the pavement, and talked together some little time. I did not overhear the conversation, but learned afterwards that the Judge told Mr. Grady that he had no provisions at home, and no money to buy them with, and asked for a small loan.
“I’ll do better than that,” said Mr. Grady. “I’ll go with you and buy them myself. Come with us,” he remarked to me with a quizzical smile. “The Judge here has found a family in distress, and we are going to send them something substantial for Christmas.”
We went to a grocery store near at hand, and I saw, as we entered, that the Judge had not only recovered his native dignity, but had added a little to suit the occasion. I observed that his bearing was even haughty. Mr. Grady had observed it, too, and the humor of the situation so delighted him that he could hardly control the laughter in his voice.
“Now, Judge,” said Mr. Grady, as we approached the counter, “we must be discreet as well as liberal. We must get what you think this suffering family most needs. You call off the articles, the clerk here will check them off, and I will have them sent to the house.”
The Judge leaned against the counter with a careless dignity quite inimitable, and glanced at the well-filled shelves.
“Well,” said he, thrumming on a paper-box, and smacking his lips thoughtfully, “we will put down first a bottle of chow-chow pickles.”
“Why, of course,” exclaimed Mr. Grady, his face radiant with mirth; “it is the very thing. What next?”
“Let me see,” said the Judge, closing his eyes reflectively—“two tumblers of strawberry jelly, three pounds of mince-meat, and two pounds of dates, if you have real good ones, and—yes—two cans of deviled ham.”
Every article the Judge ordered was something he had been used to in his happier days. The whole episode was like a scene from one of Dickens’s novels, and I have never seen Mr. Grady more delighted. He was delighted with the humor of it, and appreciated in his own quaint and charming way and to the fullest extent the pathos of it. He dwelt on it then and afterwards, and often said that he envied the broken-down old man the enjoyment of the luxuries of which he had so long been deprived.
On a memorable Christmas day not many years after, Mr. Grady stirred Atlanta to its very depths by his eloquent pen, and brought the whole community to the heights of charity and unselfishness on which he always stood. He wrought the most unique manifestation of prompt and thoughtful benevolence that is to be found recorded in modern times. The day before Christmas was bitter cold, and the night fell still colder, giving promise of the coldest weather that had been felt in Georgia for many years. The thermometer fell to zero, and it was difficult for comfortably clad people to keep warm even by the fires that plenty had provided, and it was certain that there would be terrible suffering among the poor of the city. The situation was one that appealed in the strongest manner to Mr. Grady’s sympathies. It appealed, no doubt, to the sympathies of all charitably-disposed people; but the shame of modern charity is its lack of activity. People are horrified when starving people are found near their doors, when a poor woman wanders about the streets until death comes to her relief; they seem to forget that it is the duty of charity to act as well as to give. Mr. Grady was a man of action. He did not wait for the organization of a relief committee, and the meeting of prominent citizens to devise ways and means for dispensing alms. He was his own committee. His plans were instantly formed and promptly carried out. The organization was complete the moment he determined that the poor of Atlanta should not suffer for lack of food, clothing, or fuel. He sent his reporters out into the highways and byways, and into every nook and corner of the city. He took one assignment for himself, and went about through the cold from house to house. He had a consultation with the Mayor at midnight, and cases of actual suffering were relieved then and there. The next morning, which was Sunday, the columns of the Constitution teemed with the results of the investigation which Mr. Grady and his reporters had made. A stirring appeal was made in the editorial columns for aid for the poor—such an appeal as only Mr. Grady could make. The plan of relief was carefully made out. The Constitution was prepared to take charge of whatever the charitably disposed might feel inclined to send to its office—and whatever was sent should be sent early.
The effect of this appeal was astonishing—magical, in fact. It seemed impossible to believe that any human agency could bring about such a result. By eight o’clock on Christmas morning—the day being Sunday—the street in front of the Constitution office was jammed with wagons, drays, and vehicles of all kinds, and the office itself was transformed into a vast depot of supplies. The merchants and business men had opened their stores as well as their hearts, and the coal and wood dealers had given the keys of their establishments into the gentle hands of charity. Men who were not in business subscribed money, and this rose into a considerable sum. When Mr. Grady arrived on the scene, he gave a shout of delight, and cut up antics as joyous as those of a schoolboy. Then he proceeded to business. He had everything in his head, and he organized his relief trains and put them in motion more rapidly than any general ever did. By noon, there was not a man, woman, or child, white or black, in the city of Atlanta that lacked any of the necessaries of life, and to such an extent had the hearts of the people been stirred that a large reserve of stores was left over after everybody had been supplied. It was the happiest Christmas day the poor of Atlanta ever saw, and the happiest person of all was Henry Grady.
It is appropriate to his enjoyment of Christmas to give here a beautiful editorial he wrote on Christmas day a year before he was buried. It is a little prose poem that attracted attention all over the country. Mr. Grady called it
A PERFECT CHRISTMAS DAY.
No man or woman now living will see again such a Christmas day as the one which closed yesterday, when the dying sun piled the western skies with gold and purple.
A winter day it was, shot to the core with sunshine. It was enchanting to walk abroad in its prodigal beauty, to breathe its elixir, to reach out the hands and plunge them open-fingered through its pulsing waves of warmth and freshness. It was June and November welded and fused into a perfect glory that held the sunshine and snow beneath tender and splendid skies. To have winnowed such a day from the teeming winter was to have found an odorous peach on a bough whipped in the storms of winter. One caught the musk of yellow grain, the flavor of ripening nuts, the fragrance of strawberries, the exquisite odor of violets, the aroma of all seasons in the wonderful day. The hum of bees underrode the whistling wings of wild geese flying southward. The fires slept in drowsing grates, while the people, marveling outdoors, watched the soft winds woo the roses and the lilies.
Truly it was a day of days. Amid its riotous luxury surely life was worth living to hold up the head and breathe it in as thirsting men drink water; to put every sense on its gracious excellence; to throw the hands wide apart and hug whole armfuls of the day close to the heart, till the heart itself is enraptured and illumined. God’s benediction came down with the day, slow dropping from the skies. God’s smile was its light, and all through and through its supernal beauty and stillness, unspoken but appealing to every heart and sanctifying every soul, was His invocation and promise, “Peace on earth, good will to men.”