Ladies and Gentlemen: When Death like Nature’s chastening rod hath smitten our common humanity, we realize the eternal truth that “silence is the law of being, sound the breaking of the rule.” Standing here as the representative of those who were knit to the distinguished dead by as close a tie as that of natural brotherhood, while a continent is yet vocal with the echoes of his eloquence, my heart tells me that the infinite possibilities of silence constitute the only worthy tribute which I can pay to the memory of Henry Grady. The most distinguished member of our fraternity is lost to us forever. O, Death, there is thy sting; O, Grave, there is thy victory. Though our ranks are full of gifted and famous men, in all the tribes of our Israel, there is no Elisha upon whom the mantle of this translated Elijah can descend.
My fellow Georgians, how shall I speak to you of him? It is meet that sympathy should veil her weeping eyes, when she mourns the darling child who bore her gentle image ever mirrored in his life. As well may the tongue speak when the soul has departed, as Southern oratory declaim when Southern eloquence is buried in the grave of Grady. Even American patriotism is voiceless as she stands beside the coffined chieftain of her fast-assembling host. Was he good? Let his neighbors answer. To-night Atlanta is shrouded in as deep a pall as that which wrapped Egypt in gloom when the angel of the Lord smote the first-born in every house. In the busiest city of the State the rattle of commerce to-day was suspended, the hum of industry was hushed, and in that gay capital bright pleasure hath stayed her shining feet to drop a tear upon the grave of him the people loved so well. Was he great? From the pinnacle of no official station has he fallen; the pomp and circumstance of war did not place him upon a pedestal of prominence; no book has he given to the literature of the nation; no wealth has he amassed with which to crystallize his generosity into fame; and yet to-night a continent stands weeping by his new-made grave, and as the waves come laden with the message of the Infinite to the base of the now twice historic Plymouth Rock, the sympathetic sobbing of the sea can only whisper to the stricken land, “Peace, be still; my everlasting arms are round you.”
His greatness cannot be measured by his speeches, though they were so masterful that they form a portion of his country’s history. It will rather be gauged by that patient, brilliant daily work, which made it possible for him to command the nation’s ear, that power of which these public utterances were but the exponents; his daily toil in his private sanctum in the stately building of the Constitution, that magnificent manufactory of public thought, which he wielded as a weaver does his shuttle. A small and scantily furnished room, with nothing in it save Grady, his genius and his God,—and yet thus illumined, it warmed with the light of fraternal love both sections of a Republic, compared to which that of historic Greece was but as a perfumed lamp to the noontide splendor of the sun. As a journalist Mr. Grady had no superior in America. As a writer he exercised the princely prerogative of genius which is to create and not obey the laws of rhetoric. As well attempt to teach the nightingale to sing by note, or track the summer lightning as we do the sun, as measure Grady’s style by any rhetorician’s rule. I have thought that Mr. Grady was more of an orator than a writer, and brilliant as his success in journalism was, it was but the moonlight which reflected the sun that dawned only to be obscured by death. Certainly no man in any country or in any age, ever won fame as an orator faster than he. With a wide reputation as a writer, but scarcely any as a speaker, even in his own State, he appeared one night at a banquet in New York, made a speech of twenty minutes, and the next day was known throughout the United States as the foremost of Southern orators. No swifter stride has been made to fame since the days of David, for like that heroic stripling, with the sling of courage and the stone of truth, he slew Sectionalism, the Goliath which had so long threatened and oppressed his people.
Since Appomattox two historic speeches have been made by Southern men; the one was that delivered in the Congress of the United States upon the proposition to strike from the general amnesty of the government the name of Jefferson Davis, when Benjamin H. Hill broke the knightliest lance ever shivered in a people’s honor, full on the haughty crest of the plumed knight; the other was the Boston speech of Mr. Grady which, like a magic key, will yet unlock the shackles that have so long manacled a people who, strangest paradox in history, were enslaved by the emancipation of their slaves. The logic of Hill was powerful as the club of Hercules; the eloquence of Grady was irresistible as the lyre of Orpheus.
My countrymen, if it shall be written in the history of America that by virtue of the genius of her Toombs and Cobb and Brown, on the breast of our native State was cradled a revolution which rocked a continent, upon another page of that history it will be recorded that Georgia’s Grady was the Moses who led the Southern people through a wilderness of weakness and of want at least to the Pisgah whence, with prophetic eye, he could discern a New South true to the traditions of the past as was the steel which glittered on the victorious arm, at Manassas, but whose hopeful hearts and helpful hands shall transform desolation into wealth and convert the defeat of one section of our common country into the haughty herald of that country’s future rank in the civilization of the world.
Even, when prompted by the tender relations of the fraternity which I represent, I cannot trust myself to speak of Mr. Grady’s private and social life. He was my friend. Nearly ten years since his kindly glowing words revealed to me an ambition, which I had scarcely dared to confess unto myself. As the summer days still linger with us, so does the daily intercourse which it was my fortune to enjoy with him some three months since—seem yet to “compass me about.” By the royal right of intellect he commanded the homage of my admiration; with the clarion voice of patriotism he challenged my reverence, but with the magnetism of his munificent manhood he bade Confidence, that sentry which guards the human heart, surrender this citadel at discretion. I trust that it will not be deemed inappropriate for me, man of the world as I am, to bear my public testimony to the power of Christianity illustrated in his life. Familiar in his youth with every phase of pleasure, with the affluent blood of early manhood yet running riot through his veins, with the temptations of a continent spread like a royal feast, to which his talent and his fame gave him easy access, yet when he bowed his head in reverence to the meek and lowly Nazarene, his life was the unimpeachable witness of his creed. A thousand sermons to me were concentrated in the humanized Christianity of his faith and his works. And God was good to him.—The magnificent success of the Piedmont Exposition was to him the exponent of that industrial progress which he had labored to establish. The bountiful harvest of this closing year had seemed to set the seal of God’s commendation upon his labors for the agricultural interests of the South. Such was his fame that sixty million Americans revered him as a patriot. With a wife beautiful and brilliant, adoring him as only a woman can love a genius whom she comprehends; with two children just verging into adolescence, and reverencing him as an neophyte does his faith; with the highest official station within his grasp; with the curule chair of the Governorship already opening its arms to receive him; with the future lifting the senatorial toga to drape his eloquence; with possibilities of the White House flashing through the green vista of the coming years,—with all of these he made no murmur at the summons of his God.
A widow weeps where yesterday a wife adored. Two orphans mourn to-day where yesterday two children leaned upon a father’s arm. A nation’s hope is turned to mourning. It needed the great heart of Grady to gently murmur, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”
But by all that he has accomplished, and by all that he has projected, which the coming years will yet work out, I tell you to-night, my fellow Georgians, that Henry Grady still lives an abiding influence in the destinies of his country. Greatest enemy of monopoly while he lived, the grandest of all monopolies shall be his after death, for every industrial enterprise hereafter inaugurated in the South must pay its royalty of fame to him. Sleep on, my friend, my brother, brilliant and beloved; let no distempered dream of unaccomplished greatness haunt thy long last sleep. The country that you loved, that you redeemed and disenthralled, will be your splendid and ever growing monument, and the blessings of a grateful people will be the grand inscription, which shall grow longer as that monument rises higher among the nations of the earth. Wherever the peach shall blush beneath the kisses of the Southern sun, wherever the affluent grape shall don the royal purple of Southern sovereignty, a votive offering from the one and a rich libation from the other, the grateful husbandman will tender unto you. The music of no machinery shall be heard within this Southland which does not chant a pæan in your praise. Wherever Eloquence, the deity whom this people hath ever worshiped, shall retain a temple, no pilgrim shall enter there, save he bear thy dear name as a sacred shibboleth on his lips. So long as patriotism shall remain the shining angel who guards the destinies of our Republic, her starry finger will point to Grady on Plymouth Rock, for Fame will choose to chisel his statue there, standing as the sentinel whom God had placed to keep eternal watch over the liberties of a re-united people!
The exercises were concluded with the benediction by the Rev. G. A. Nunnally, D.D., President of Mercer University.