But all our words are empty, and they mock the air. If we would speak the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within this city that he loved, a monument tall as his services, and noble as the place he filled. Let every Georgian lend a hand, and as it rises to confront in majesty his darkened home, let the widow who weeps there be told that every stone that makes it has been sawn from the solid prosperity that he builded, and that the light which plays upon its summit is, in afterglow, the sunshine that he brought into the world.
And for the rest—silence. The sweetest thing about his funeral was that no sound broke the stillness, save the reading of the Scriptures and the melody of music. No fire that can be kindled upon the altar of speech can relume the radiant spark that perished yesterday. No blaze born in all our eulogy can burn beside the sunlight of his useful life. After all there is nothing grander than such living.
I have seen the light that gleamed at midnight from the headlight of some giant engine rushing onward through the darkness, heedless of opposition, fearless of danger, and I thought it was grand. I have seen the light come over the eastern hills in glory, driving the lazy darkness like mist before a sea-born gale, till leaf and tree, and blade of grass glittered in the myriad diamonds of the morning ray; and I thought it was grand.
I have seen the light that leaped at midnight athwart the storm-swept sky, shivering over chaotic clouds, mid howling winds, till cloud and darkness and the shadow-haunted earth flashed into mid-day splendor, and I knew it was grand. But the grandest thing, next to the radiance that flows from the Almighty Throne, is the light of a noble and beautiful life, wrapping itself in benediction ’round the destinies of men, and finding its home in the blessed bosom of the Everlasting God!
SPEECH OF GOVERNOR GORDON.
Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens: The news of Henry Grady’s death reached me at a quiet country retreat in a distant section of the State. The grief of that rural community, as deep and sincere as the shock produced by his death was great and unexpected, told more feelingly and eloquently than any words of mine possibly can, the universality of the love and admiration of all her people for Georgia’s peerless son.
It is no exaggeration to say that the humblest and the highest, the poorest and richest—all classes, colors and creeds, with an unspeakable sorrow, mourn his death as a public calamity. It is no exaggeration to say that no man lives who can take his place. It is no extravagant eulogy to declare that scarcely any half-dozen men, by their combined efforts, can fill in all departments the places which he filled in his laborious and glorious life.
His wonderful intellect, enabling him, without apparent effort, to master the most difficult and obtuse public questions, and to treat them with matchless grace and power; his versatile genius, which made him at once the leader in great social reforms, as well as in gigantic industrial movements—that genius which made him at once the eloquent advocate, the logical expounder, the wise organizer, the vigorous executive—all these rich and unrivaled endowments, justify in claiming for him a place among the greatest and most gifted of this or any age.
But splendid as were his intellectual abilities, it is the boundless generosity of his nature, his sweet and loving spirit, his considerate and tender charity, exhaustless as a fountain of living waters, refreshing and making happy all hearts around him, these are the characteristics on which I love most to dwell. It is no wonder that his splendid genius attracted the gaze and challenged the homage of the continent. It is perhaps even a less wonder that a man with such boundless sympathies for his fellow men and so prodigal with his own time and talent and money in the service of the public, should be so universally and tenderly loved.
The career of Henry Grady is more than unique. It constitutes a new chapter in human experience. No private citizen in the whole eventful history of this Republic ever wore a chaplet so fadeless or linked his name so surely with deathless immortality. His name as a journalist and orator, his brilliant and useful life, his final crowning triumph, especially the circumstances of martyrdom surrounding his death, making it like that of the giant of holy writ, as we trust, more potential than ever in intellectual prowess of magic of the living man—all these will conspire not more surely to carry his fame to posterity, than will his deeds of charity and ready responses to those who needed his effective help, serve to endear to our hearts and memories, as long as life shall last, the memory of Henry W. Grady.