THE MODEL CITIZEN.
From the “Boston Globe.”
Henry W. Grady dead? It seems almost impossible.
Only ten days ago his fervid oratory rang out in a Boston banquet hall, and enchanted the hundreds of Boston’s business men who heard it. Only nine days ago the newspapers carried his glowing words and great thoughts into millions of homes. And now he lies in the South he loved so well—dead!
“He has work yet to do,” said the physician, as the great orator lay dying. “Perhaps his work is finished,” replied Mr. Grady’s mother. She was right. To the physician, as to many others, it must have seemed that Mr. Grady’s work was just beginning; that not much had yet been accomplished. For he was young; only thirty-eight years old. He had never held a public office, and there is a current delusion that office is the necessary condition of success for those endowed with political talents. But Mr. Grady had done his work, and it was a great work, too. He had done more, perhaps, than any other man to destroy the lingering animosities of the war and re-establish cordial relations between North and South. His silvery speech and graphic imagery had opened the minds of thousands of influential men of the North to a truer conception of the South. He had shown them that the Old South was a memory only; the New South a reality. And he had done more than any other man to open the eyes of the North to the peerless natural advantages of his section, so that streams of capital began to flow southward to develop those resources.
He was a living example of what a plain citizen may do for his country without the aid of wealth, office or higher position than his own talents and earnest patriotism gave him.
Boston joins with Atlanta and the South in mourning the untimely death of this eloquent orator, statesmanlike thinker, able journalist and model citizen. He will long be affectionately remembered in this city and throughout the North.