SPEECH OF HON. JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES.
I am one among the thousands who loved him, and I stand with the millions who lament his death.
I loved him in the promise of his glowing youth, when, across my boyish vision he walked with winning grace, from easy effort to success. I loved him in the flush of splendid manhood when a Nation hung upon his words—and now, with the dross of human friendship smitten in my soul—I love him best of all as he lies yonder under the December skies, with face as tranquil and with smile as sweet as patrial ever wore.
In this sweet and solemn hour all the rare and kindly adjectives that blossomed in the shining pathway of his pen, seem to have come from every quarter of the continent to lay themselves in loving tribute at their master’s feet; but rich as the music that they bring, all the cadences of our eulogy
Sigh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.
And here to-day, within this hall glorified by the echoes of his eloquence, standing to answer the impulse of my heart in the roll-call of his friends, and stricken with my emptiness of words, I know that, when the finger of God touched his eyelids into sleep, there gathered a silence upon the only lips that could weave the sunbright story of his days, or mete sufficient eulogy to the incomparable richness of his life.
I agree with Patrick Collins that he was the most brilliant son of this Republic. If the annals of these times are told with truth, they will give him place as the phenomenon of his period, the Admirable Crichton of the age in which he lived. No eloquence has equaled his since Sargent Prentiss faded from the earth. No pen has plowed such noble furrow in his country’s fallow fields since the wrist of Horace Greeley rested; no age of the Republic has witnessed such marvelous conjunction of a magical pen with the velvet splendor of a mellow tongue, and although the warlike rival of these wondrous forces never rose within his life, it is writ of all his living, that the noble fires of his genius were lighted in his boyhood from the gleam that died upon his father’s sword.
I have loved to follow, and I love to follow now the pathway of that diamond pen as it flashed like an inspiration over every phase of life in Georgia. It touched the sick body of a desolate and despairing agriculture with the impulse of a better method, and the farmer, catching the glow of promise in his words, left off sighing and went to singing in his fields, until at last the better day has come, and as the sunshine melts into his harvests with the tender rain, the heart of humanity is glad in his hope and the glow on his fields seems the smile of the Lord. Its brave point went with cheerful prophecy and engaging manliness into the ranks of toil, until the workman at his anvil felt the dignity of labor pulse the somber routine of the hours, and the curse of Adam softening in the faith of silver sentences, became the blessing and the comfort of his days. Into the era of practical politics it dashed with the grace of an earlier chivalry, and in an age of pushing and unseemly scramble, it woke the spirit of a loftier sentiment, while around the glow of splendid narrative and the charm of entrancing plea there grew a goodlier company of youth, linked to the Republic’s nobler legends and holding fast that generous loyalty which builds the highest bulwark of the State.
First of all the instruments which fitted his genius to expression was this radiant pen. Long after it had blazed his way to eminence and usefulness, he waked the power of that surpassing oratory which has bettered all the sentiment of his country and enriched the ripe vocabulary of the world. Nothing in the history of human speech will equal the stately steppings of his eloquence into glory. In a single night he caught the heart of the country into its warm embrace, and leaped from a banquet revelry into national fame. It is, at last, the crowning evidence of his genius, that he held to the end, unbroken, the high fame so easily won, and sweeping from triumph unto triumph, with not one leaf of his laurels withered by time or staled by circumstance, died on yesterday—the foremost orator of all the world.
It is marvelous, past all telling how he caught the heart of the country in the fervid glow of his own! All the forces of our statesmanship have not prevailed for union like the ringing speeches of this bright, magnetic man. His eloquence was the electric current over which the positive and negative poles of American sentiment were rushing to a warm embrace. It was the transparent medium through which the bleared eyes of sections were learning to see each other clearer and to love each other better. He was melting bitterness in the warmth of his patrial sympathies, sections were being linked in the logic of his liquid sentences, and when he died he was literally loving a Nation into peace.
Fit and dramatic climax to a glorious mission, that he should have lived to carry the South’s last and greatest message to the center of the Nation’s culture, and then, with the gracious answer to his transcendent service locked in his loyal heart, come home to die among the people he had served! Fitter still, that, as he walked in final triumph through the streets of his beloved city, he should have caught upon his kingly head that wreath of Southern roses—richer jewels than Victoria wears—plucked by the hands of Georgia women, borne by the hands of Georgia men, and flung about him with a loving tenderness that crowned him for his burial, that, in the unspeakable fragrance of Georgia’s full and sweet approval, he might “draw the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.”
If I should seek to touch the core of all his greatness, I would lay my hand upon his heart. I should speak of his humanity—his almost inspired sympathies, his sweet philanthropy and the noble heartfulness that ran like a silver current through his life. His heart was the furnace where he fashioned all his glowing speech. Love was the current that sent his golden sentences pulsing through the world, and in the honest throb of human sympathies he found the anchor that held him steadfast to all things great and true. He was the incarnate triumph of a heartful man.
I thank God, as I stand above my buried friend, that there is not one ignoble memory in all the shining pathway of his fame! In all the glorious gifts that God Almighty gave him, not one was ever bent to willing service in unworthy cause. He lived to make the world about him better. With all his splendid might he helped to build a happier, heartier and more wholesome sentiment among his kind. And in fondness, mixed with reverence, I believe that the Christ of Calvary, who died for men, has found a welcome sweet for one who fleshed within his person the golden spirit of the New Commandment and spent his powers in glorious living for his race.
O brilliant and incomparable Grady! We lay for a season thy precious dust beneath the soil that bore and cherished thee, but we fling back against all our brightening skies the thoughtless speech that calls thee dead! God reigns and his purpose lives, and although these brave lips are silent here, the seeds sown in this incarnate eloquence will sprinkle patriots through the years to come, and perpetuate thy living in a race of nobler men!
But all our words are empty, and they mock the air. If we would speak the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within this city that he loved, a monument tall as his services, and noble as the place he filled. Let every Georgian lend a hand, and as it rises to confront in majesty his darkened home, let the widow who weeps there be told that every stone that makes it has been sawn from the solid prosperity that he builded, and that the light which plays upon its summit is, in afterglow, the sunshine that he brought into the world.
And for the rest—silence. The sweetest thing about his funeral was that no sound broke the stillness, save the reading of the Scriptures and the melody of music. No fire that can be kindled upon the altar of speech can relume the radiant spark that perished yesterday. No blaze born in all our eulogy can burn beside the sunlight of his useful life. After all there is nothing grander than such living.
I have seen the light that gleamed at midnight from the headlight of some giant engine rushing onward through the darkness, heedless of opposition, fearless of danger, and I thought it was grand. I have seen the light come over the eastern hills in glory, driving the lazy darkness like mist before a sea-born gale, till leaf and tree, and blade of grass glittered in the myriad diamonds of the morning ray; and I thought it was grand.
I have seen the light that leaped at midnight athwart the storm-swept sky, shivering over chaotic clouds, mid howling winds, till cloud and darkness and the shadow-haunted earth flashed into mid-day splendor, and I knew it was grand. But the grandest thing, next to the radiance that flows from the Almighty Throne, is the light of a noble and beautiful life, wrapping itself in benediction ’round the destinies of men, and finding its home in the blessed bosom of the Everlasting God!