SPEECH OF JUDGE HOWARD VAN EPPS.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The lightning brought this message to Atlanta:
“Henry Grady spends Christmas in heaven.”
Who doubts it? What creature whom the Creator has loved enough to suffer him to hold a Christian’s faith will question that he is at this moment in company with the good and great and virtuous who have preceded him? I looked upon his face, the pitifulness of death sealed upon it, and as I turned away with swimming eyes, I saw hidden in a mass of flowers that loving hands had placed by his side, these words:
O, stainless gentleman!
True man, true hero, true philanthropist!
Thy name was “Great Heart,” honor was thy shield,
Thy golden motto, “Duty without fear!”
And the fragrant breath around him seemed vocal with triumphant voices, singing, “Reward without stint!” In Athens, the home of his boyhood, a few months ago, he said, “I am going to Sunday-school. I want to feel that I am a boy again.” When seated there the children sang, “Shall we gather at the river?” and he sank his face in both his hands, and tears flooded through his fingers. O, “Great Heart,” we know that when your eyes closed upon the weariness of the terrestrial, they opened fearless upon the glories of the celestial. I fancy Mr. Hill sought him without delay, fixing upon him the earnest, penetrating glance we know so well, but out of which the pained seriousness has been washed away forever, exclaiming, “Why, Henry! You? And so soon! Welcome home to our Father’s house!” Judge Lochrane has doubtless already repaired to his side and regaled him with a bit of celestial humor that set the seraphs ashout with laughter. Perhaps he has encountered by this time Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Davis with arms interlocked, their differences all adjusted, in wider wisdom, and has been startled to hear them say: “We were but just now speaking of you and of the future destiny of the American Republic. Mr. Lincoln had just remarked that the United States were on the threshold of a more cordial understanding and a closer union than ever before, and Mr. Davis has just quoted your prophetic invocation: ‘Let us resolve to crown the miracles of the past with the spectacle of a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill—serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory—blazing out the path, and making clear the way, up which all the nations of the earth must come in God’s appointed time!’”
Oh, that he who alone knew how to describe “a perfect Christmas day,” could come back to his beloved Atlanta and make it all clear to us—the recognitions, the employments, the conversations, the blessedness of the redeemed. What sort of goblet of immortal nectar—of commingled “musk of yellow grain, of flavor of ripening fruits, fragrance of strawberries, exquisite odor of violets, aroma of all seasons” of the celestial year, did the angels brew out of the material of yesterday to pledge the never-ending fellowships of Heaven in? What sort of hug of odorous shine did Henry get armsful of yesterday, when he flung his hands wide apart in the presence of that Being whom he was wont to call always in his reverent speech “the Lord God Almighty.”
Oh, well enough for Henry! but for us only the pain of it all, the bitter pain. I look abroad and Atlanta’s business men seem grown suddenly older. The cry of the newsboys—“Paper, sir?”—is almost a sob. I went late at night into the Constitution building and the editors’ faces were graver than they should be, and the composing-room was heavy with suggestions of widowhood and orphanage.
I went into a store Christmas eve (for Henry would not have the children neglected) and the merchant couldn’t find anything he sought for, and said, apologetically, “I haven’t had any sense to-day.” The pity of it! We are bereft. Our city is desolate. We had some great public enterprises in view, that is, Henry had, and we were going to follow him, and overwork him, as usual.
We are disheartened—almost discouraged. Atlanta is so young and fiery, almost fierce in her civic energy, and pulls so hard on the reins. Who will drive for us now?
We will see more clearly after a little, when our grief is calmer, but now as we see it through our tears, the face and body of the times are out of joint.
I do not care, in this place and under present limitations, to speak of his kittenish boyhood; of his idyllic home-life; of his rollicsome and irresistible humor; of his sympathy and prodigality of self-sacrifice; of his boundless love to his fellow men; of his ability as a writer and super-eminence as an orator; of his pride in Atlanta and services in aid of her material progress; of his patriotic devotion to the South and to the Union. I want to ask indulgence to say one thing, which, as I believe, were he here to prescribe my course and dictate my utterances, he would have me say. I want to say to noble men of all parties, north and east and west, speaking here from Grady’s bier, that the South is no more hostile to the Union than is New England, and that her love, and sympathy, and desire to help the dependent class in her midst is deeper, if possible, than the treason of political agitators who seek to foment race prejudice to secure party supremacy. “We pledge our lives, our property, and our sacred honor,” that we will bring wisdom and humanity to the solution of the grave problem in government which confronts us, and that we “will carry in honor and peace to the end.” We repeat again and again, in our sadness, with the sacredness of our grief for his loss around us, the plea of Georgia’s son, for patience, for confidence, for sympathy, for loyalty to the Republic, devoid of suspicion and estrangement, against any section.
We send greeting to generous New England. They loved him and we love them for it. We have even forgiven them for being Republicans. We throw his knightly and Christian gauntlet at their feet. We challenge her business men, in the name of our champion of the doctrine of the brotherhood of men and of Americans, to the national glory-fields of the future—to fraternal love that will forgive errors of judgment seven times, and seventy times seven; and to a patriotic pride in and devotion to every foot of the soil of our magnificent Republic, that will brook no suspicions and no wrath in all her borders except when directed against a foreign enemy.
Professor White’s address was delivered under very trying conditions. He had been suffering from a severe headache all morning and, in fact, he has been unwell for several days past. During his speech he suffered painfully, and immediately at its conclusion he was so much overcome as to be almost completely prostrated. He was led from the stage to the office of Judge Will Haight, where he remained until he recovered, leaving for home later in the afternoon.
The address was delivered with pathos and emotion, and that part which bore on his close relations with the dead man touched a responsive chord in every heart in the vast audience that sat in listening attention to the words of love.