Washington Dessau, }
In moving the adoption of the resolutions, he said:
Mr. Chairman: In moving the adoption of this, the report of your committee, I can but say that to-night emphasizes the words of Jerusalem’s King: “A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.” Death came to him as a benediction that followed a sacrifice. Warned by his physician that he was ill, cavalier of the South alone he marched to battle for her, uninspired by the enthusiasm of a battle array, yet within cannon shot of Bunker Hill, and where he could feel the spray from Plymouth Rock, he fought a gallant fight for us, and leaving the field victor, amidst the plaudits of those he had conquered, he hastened home to complete his sacrifice; and the same angel that bade him leave this world spoke not only to the soul of Henry W. Grady, but to all the people North and South: “Peace, be still.”
The resolutions were unanimously adopted by a rising vote.
Professor G. R. Glenn was then introduced and read the following preamble and resolution on the part of the committee of alumni:
ALUMNI RESOLUTIONS.
It is no ordinary occasion that calls us together. That was no ordinary light that went out in the gray mists of early dawn. It was no ordinary life that has so suddenly and so strangely come down to its close. To those of us who were University students with him, who knew his University career, the story of his splendid accomplishments has more than ordinary significance, and the heart-breaking tragedy of his sudden taking off a profound meaning.
We had a personal sympathy in every stride of his struggling manhood: we carried a personal pride to every wonderful achievement of his growing genius: we hailed with fraternal joy every popular triumph of his intellectual prowess; we joined in every glad shout that told how victoriously his unselfish love was commanding sway over the American heart; and when he is stricken down we bow our heads in sorrow, as only those can who know the sources from which he drew the inspirations of his life.
He came from the University of Georgia in those palmy days from ’66 to ’72, when Lipscomb and Mell and W. L. Brown and Waddell and Rutherford and Charbonnier and Jones and Smead—names that some of us will teach our boys to pronounce tenderly and reverently—were at their greatest and best. In this company gathered here are those who know the meaning and the moulding power of great character builders like these. The great soul of the venerable Chancellor Lipscomb, that grand arch priest of higher learning, made its impress on the soul of the young man at Athens. Some of us can trace that impress, and the impress of the University of those days, through all his after life down to that Boston speech, aye, even to the delirium of that last sickness, when his thought was for others rather than of himself.