MR. GRADY’S DEATH.
From the “Savannah Times.”
Henry Woodfin Grady, Georgia’s bright particular genius, is dead!
A dread disease contracted in the bleak North barely a fortnight ago, cut him down ere he had hardly stepped across the threshold of what promised to be the most remarkable life of its generation. Here, in his dearly loved mother State, his brilliant mind was a source of pride to the whole people. Throughout the length and breadth of the South, which owed him incalculably much, Henry Grady’s name is a household word. And as no other Southerner, save possibly our illustrious Gordon, he had caught the ear, aye, and the heart of hearts of the Northern land. Yes, and beyond the seas his fame had gone, and in foreign climes his intellect had impressed the intellectual. To the manner born, he loved his State and his South with all the ardor of the highest type of patriot. His tongue was never silent nor his inkhorn dry when our people were aspersed. He met traducers with truths and a glittering wit which were matchless.
Grady was a genius born. His work has proved it. Ah! the sad part of it is that Death has snatched him with so much of the grand mission which was plainly his unfinished. Nature seldom endows her children with the gifts with which she favored Grady. Among modern orators he was the peer of any and his pen spoke as eloquently as his tongue. Whether at his desk or facing an audience, his thoughts found expression in a rapid, graceful, forcible style. No man was more entertaining in private life, though it must be confessed that Mr. Grady had moments when he became so absorbed in his own thoughts that he was oblivious to what was passing around him, and men who knew him not were apt to do him an injustice in judging him. His life was devoted to Atlanta and Georgia, and to the effacing of the sectional line which divided the South and the North. The bringing of the people of the two sections into closer relations of thought and industry was a mission which it did seem had been especially reserved for him. No man in the North has shown the breadth of view which marked this Georgian. His last public utterance attracted the attention of the English-speaking world as no other speech in recent years has done and, while the applause was still echoing from shore to shore of this continent, he was stricken.
In his chosen profession, newspaper work, Grady illustrated its great possibilities. What the elder Bennett, Thurlow Weed and Greeley were to the press of the North, Grady was to the press of the South. Public honors were undoubtedly awaiting him, and he had but to stretch out his hand.
A Roman emperor’s boast was that he found the Eternal City one of bricks and left it one of marble. Henry Grady found Atlanta an unpretentious town and literally made it the most progressive city in the South.