And the leaves of the judgment book unfold!
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!’”