Joel Chandler Harris' life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches

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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!