Mr. Grady attended the New England banquet for the purpose of making a mere formal response to the toast of “The South,” but, as he said afterwards, there was something in the scene that was inspiring. Near him sat General Tecumseh Sherman, who marched through Georgia with fire and sword, and all around him were the fat and jocund sons of New England who had prospered by the results of the war while his own people had had the direst poverty for their portion. “When I found myself on my feet,” he said, describing the scene on his return, “every nerve in my body was strung as tight as a fiddle-string, and all tingling. I knew then that I had a message for that assemblage, and as soon as I opened my mouth it came rushing out.”
That speech, as we all know, was an achievement in its way. It stirred the whole country from one end to the other, and made Mr. Grady famous. Invitations to speak poured in upon him from all quarters, and he at last decided to deliver an address at Dallas, Texas. His friends advised him to prepare the speech in advance, especially as many of the newspapers of the country would be glad to have proofs of it to be used when it was delivered. He saw how essential this would be, but the preparation of a speech in cold blood (as he phrased it) was irksome to him, and failed to meet the approval of his methods, which were as responsive to the occasion as the report of the thunder-clap is to the lightning’s flash. He knew that he could depend on these methods in all emergencies and under all circumstances, and he felt that only by depending on them could he do himself justice before an audience. The one characteristic of all his speeches, as natural to his mind as it was surprising to the minds of others, was the ease and felicity with which he seized on suggestions born of the moment and growing out of his immediate surroundings. It might be some incident occurring to the audience, some failure in the programme, some remark of the speaker introducing him, or some unlooked-for event; but, whatever it was, he seized it and compelled it to do duty in pointing a beautiful moral, or he made it the basis of that swift and genial humor that was a feature not only of his speeches, but of his daily life.
He was prevailed on, however, to prepare his Dallas speech in advance. It was put in type in the Constitution office, carefully revised, and proof slips sent out to a number of newspapers. Mr. Grady’s journey from Atlanta to Dallas, which was undertaken in a special car, was in the nature of an ovation. He was met at every station by large crowds, and his appearance created an enthusiasm that is indescribable. No such tribute as this has ever before been paid, under any circumstances, to any private American citizen, and it is to be doubted whether even any public official, no matter how exalted his station, has ever been greeted with such hearty and spontaneous enthusiasm. His reception in Dallas was the culmination of the series of ovations through which he had passed. Some sort of programme had been arranged by a committee, but the crowds trampled on this, and the affair took the shape of an American hullaballoo, so to speak, and, as such, it was greatly enjoyed by Mr. Grady.
Meanwhile, the programme that had been arranged for the speech-making was fully carried out. The young editor completely captured the vast crowd that had assembled to hear him. This information had been promptly carried to the Constitution office by private telegrams, and everything was made ready for giving the speech to the public the next morning; but during the afternoon this telegram came:
“Suppress speech: It has been entirely changed. Notify other papers.”
At the last moment, his mind full of the suggestions of his surroundings, he felt that the prepared speech could not be depended on, and he threw it away. It was a great relief to him, he told me afterward, to be able to do this. Whatever in the prepared speech seemed to be timely he used, but he departed entirely from the line of it at every point, and the address that the Texans heard was mainly an impromptu one. It created immense enthusiasm, and confirmed the promise of the speech before the New England Society.
The speech before the University of Virginia was also prepared beforehand, but Mr. Grady made a plaything of the preparation before his audience. “I was never so thoroughly convinced of Mr. Grady’s power,” said the Hon. Guyton McLendon, of Thomasville, to the writer, “as when I heard him deliver this speech.” Mr. McLendon had accompanied him on his journey to Charlottesville. “We spent a day in Washington,” said Mr. McLendon, recalling the incidents of the trip. “The rest of the party rode around the capital looking at the sights, but Mr. Grady, myself, and one or two others remained in the car. While we were waiting there, Mr. Grady read me the printed slips of his speech, and I remember that it made a great impression on me. I thought it was good enough for any occasion, but Mr. Grady seemed to have his doubts about it. He examined it critically two or three times, and made some alterations. Finally he laid it away. When he did come to deliver the speech, I was perhaps the most astonished person you ever saw. I expected to hear again the speech that had been read to me in the Pullman coach, but I heard a vastly different and a vastly better one. He used the old speech only where it was most timely and most convenient. The incident of delivering the prize to a young student who had won it on a literary exercise of some sort, started Mr. Grady off in a new vein and on a new line, and after that he used the printed speech merely to fill out with here and there. It was wonderful how he could break away from it and come back to it, fitting the old with the new in a beautiful and harmonious mosaic. If anybody had told me that the human mind was capable of such a performance as this on the wing and in the air, so to speak, I shouldn’t have believed it. To me it was a wonderful manifestation of genius, and I knew then, for the first time, that there was no limit to Mr. Grady’s power and versatility as a speaker.”
In his speeches in the country towns of Georgia and before the farmers, Mr. Grady made no pretense of preparation. His private secretary, Mr. James R. Holliday, caught and wrote out the pregnant paragraphs that go to make up his Elberton speech, which was the skeleton and outline on which he based his speeches to the farmers. Each speech, as might be supposed, was a beautiful variation of this rural theme to which he was wedded, but the essential part of the Elberton speech was the bone and marrow of all. I think there is no passage in our modern literature equal in its effectiveness and pathos to his picture of a Southern farmer’s home. It was a matter on which his mind dwelt. There was that in his nature to which both sun and soil appealed. The rain falling on a fallow field, the sun shining on the bristling and waving corn, and the gentle winds of heaven blowing over all—he was never tired of talking of these, and his talk always took the shape of a series of picturesque descriptions. He appreciated their spiritual essence as well as their material meaning, and he surrendered himself entirely to all the wholesome suggestions that spring from the contemplation of rural scenes.
I suppose it is true that all men—except those who are brought in daily contact with the practical and prosy side of it—have a longing for a country life. Mr. Grady’s longing in that direction took the shape of a passion that was none the less serious and earnest because he knew it was altogether romantic. In the Spring of 1889, the matter engaged his attention to such an extent, that he commissioned a compositor in the Constitution office to purchase a suburban farm. He planned it all out beforehand, and knew just where the profits were to come in. His descriptions of his imaginary farm were inimitable, and the details, as he gave them out, were marked by the rare humor with which he treated the most serious matters. There was to be an old-fashioned spring in a clump of large oak-trees on the place, meadows of orchard grass and clover, through which mild-eyed Jerseys were to wander at will, and in front of the house there was to be a barley patch gloriously green, and a colt frolicking and capering in it. The farm was of course a dream, but it was a very beautiful one while it lasted, and he dwelt on it with an earnestness that was quite engaging to those who enjoyed his companionship. The farm was a dream, but he no doubt got more enjoyment and profit out of it than a great many prosy people get out of the farms that are real. Insubstantial as it was, Mr. Grady’s farm served to relieve the tension of a mind that was always busy with the larger affairs of this busy and stirring age, and many a time when he grew tired of the incessant demands made on his time and patience he would close the door of his room with a bang and instruct the office-boy to tell all callers that he had “gone to his farm.” The fat cows that grazed there lowed their welcome, the chickens cackled to see him come, and the colt capered nimbly in the green expanse of barley—children of his dreams all, but all grateful and restful to a busy mind.