For every heart he had a tone,
Could make its pulses all his own.
Some men burst to shatters by their own furious notion, others in the course of nature simply cease to shine; some dart through the period of their existence like meteors through the sky, leaving as little impression behind and having with it a connection equally as slight, while others enter it so thoroughly that the time becomes identified with them. To this latter class belonged Henry Grady.
His pen improved the agriculture of the South; it advanced the material interest and substantial growth of Georgia; it advocated industrial training for the youths and maidens of the land; it developed the poetry of the State; it elevated the morals of men and purified their character; it created noble aspirations in the human heart; it implanted seeds of benevolence, charity and liberality; it taught the lesson of self-abnegation and forgiveness; it inculcated principles of patriotism and love of country; it softened animosities between the North and South, and clasped the hands of the two sections in fraternal greeting. His pen built Atlanta, it aided in building up Georgia; it established expositions that were a credit to the State and a glory to her people; it accumulated by one editorial $85,000 for the erection of a Y. M. C. A. building; it collected the fund for the erection of the Confederate soldiers’ home, which will ever stand as a monument to his patriotism and fidelity. When winter clasped Atlanta in its icy embrace, and the poor were suffering from hunger and cold, his pleading pen made the God-favored people of that city, who sat within places of wealth and comfort, by glowing fires and bountifully laden tables, hear the wail of the orphan and the cry of the widow; purse-strings were unfastened, cold hearts thawed under the magnetic warmth of his melting pathos, and in a few hours there was not an empty larder or a fireless home among the poor of Georgia’s great capital. Whether engaged in making governors and senators, or preparing a Christmas dinner for newsboys, whether occupied in building a church or forming a Chautauqua; whether constructing a railroad or erecting some eleemosynary institution, his pen was powerful and his influence potent. It has left its impress upon the tablets of the world’s memory, and the name of Henry Grady, the great pacificator, will live in song and story until the sundown of time.
According to a contemporary, Henry Grady, while a beardless student at college, wrote a letter to the Atlanta Constitution, which was his first newspaper experience. The sparkle and dash of the communication so pleased the editor of the paper, that when the first press convention after the war was tendered a ride over the State road, the editor telegraphed his boyish correspondent, who had then returned to his home in Athens, that he wished to have him represent the Constitution on that trip, and write up the country and its resources along the line of the road. Mr. Grady accepted the commission, and of all the hundreds of letters written on the occasion, his, over the signature of “King Hans,” were most popular and most widely copied. He became editor and one of the proprietors of the Rome Daily Commercial, a sprightly, newsy, and enterprising journal. Rome, however, was at that time too small to support a daily paper on such a scale, and in 1872 Mr. Grady purchased an interest in the Atlanta Herald. Here he found room and opportunity for his soaring wings, and the Herald became one of the most brilliant papers ever published in Georgia. In 1876 he became connected with the Constitution. By this time his editorial abilities had made him many friends at home and abroad, and James Gordon Bennett at once made him the Southern representative of the New York Herald. On this journal Mr. Grady did some of the best work of his life. He rapidly regained all that he had lost in his ventures, and in 1880 purchased a fourth interest in the Constitution, taking the position of managing editor, which he held at the time of his death. His career in that capacity is a matter of proud and brilliant history. He had just commenced an interesting series of valuable letters to the New York Ledger when he was stricken down with fatal sickness, even while the plaudits of the admiring multitude were ringing in his ears and the press of the country was singing his praises.
The last editorial Grady wrote was the beautiful and soulful tribute on the death of Jefferson Davis; and on the eve of Mr. Grady’s departure from Atlanta for Boston he sounded the bugle-call for funds to help erect a monument to the peerless champion of the “Lost Cause.” How strange, indeed, that the illustrious leader and sage of the Old South and the brilliant and fearless apostle of the New South, should pass away so near together. Ben Hill died, and his place has never been supplied in Georgia. Mr. Grady approached nearer to it than any other man. Now Grady is gone, and his duplicate cannot be found in the State. Society was blessed by his living and his State advanced by his usefulness and excellence.
Like the great Cicero, who, when quitting Rome, took from among his domestic divinities the ivory statue of Minerva, the protectress of Rome, and consecrated it in the temple, to render it inviolable to the spoilers, so Henry Grady, when leaving his college halls to enter upon a brilliant life in the journalistic world, took with him to the oracles the statue of pure thought, and after its consecration, to protect and preserve it in his bosom, it became to him a shield and buckler. Thus armed he went forward to the battle of life, determined to do his whole duty to his country, his God and truth. How well he succeeded, the voice of admiring humanity proclaims, and the angels of heaven have recorded. He vanquished all opposition and waved his triumphant banner over every field of conflict.
His thoughts were sparks struck from the mind of Deity, immortal in their character and duration. They were active, energizing, beautiful, and refined. His mind was like a precious bulb, putting forth its shoots and blooming its flowers, warmed by the sunshine and watered by the showers. It was like a beautiful blade, burnished and brightened, and as it flashed in the sunlight it mirrored his kingly soul and knightly spirit.
Looking back at the ages that have rolled by in the revolutions of time, what have we remaining of the past but the thoughts of men? Where is magnificent Babylon with her palaces, her artificial lakes and hanging gardens that were the pride and luxury of her vicious inhabitants; where is majestic Nineveh, that proud mistress of the East with her monuments of commercial enterprise and prosperity? Alas! they are no more. Tyre, that great city, into whose lap the treasures of the world were poured, she too is no more. The waves of the sea now roll where once stood the immense and sumptuous palaces of Tyrian wealth. Temples, arches and columns may crumble to pieces and be swept into the sea of oblivion; nature may decay and races of men come and go like the mists of the morning before the rising sun, but the proud monuments of Henry Grady’s mind will survive the wrecks of matter and the shocks of time.
On the Piedmont heights peacefully sleeps the freshness of the heart of the New South, cut down in the grandeur of his fame and in the meridian of his powers, in the glory of his life and in the richest prime of his royal manhood. His brow is wreathed with laurel. Costly marble will mark the place of his head, and beautiful flowers bloom at his feet. There the birds will carol their vespers, and gentle breezes breathe fragrance o’er his grave. The sun in his dying splendor, ere sinking to rest amid the clouds that veil the “golden gate,” will linger to kiss the majestic monument reared by loving hearts, and with a flood of beauty bathe it in heavenly glory. And then the blush fades, even as it fades from the face of a beautiful woman. Shadows begin to climb the hillside, and nature sleeps, lulled by the soft music of the singing wind. The stars, the bright forget-me-nots of the angels, come out to keep their vigils o’er the sleeping dust of him whose soul hath gone