SEARGENT S. PRENTISS AND HENRY W. GRADY.
SIMILARITY OF GENIUS AND PATRIOTISM.
By Joseph F. Pon.
HISTORY repeats itself, and genius does the same. The light which shines with electric brilliancy in one portion of a country, though suddenly extinguished, soon blazes forth with life and hope, in genial air and under propitious skies.
Eminent in illustration of this truth, is the very great similarity in the mental structure, the physical temperament and the personal qualities of Seargent S. Prentiss and Henry W. Grady. The first was born in bleak and sterile Maine, and yet his great heart was not hemmed in by the hills around which clung the memories of his Pilgrim fathers. It took within its spacious chambers, and nurtured in patriotic affection the new-found friends of his adopted home, in the semi-tropical valleys of the lower Mississippi. The other was born on Georgia soil, and Southern traditions, memories and methods of thought seemed but a second nature with him. It did not prevent his fullness to the brim with that Promethean flame and “milk of human kindness,” which caused him in boundless Americanism, to wear a constant smile, born of infinite hope and faith in the future of a great Republic, stretching from the rugged coast of Maine to the broad plazas of Texas—from the noble forests of Oregon to the coral reefs of Florida.
Each of these men combined with deep research and intuitive perception, an imagination as luxuriant as a tropical garden, and while each put forth “thoughts that breathed in words that burned,” he was ever careful in the exercise of his great gifts, that they should always be directed in the promotion of human happiness, and to stimulate the loftiest human exertion. When Prentiss or Grady spoke every listener felt the touch of the master hand as it played upon his heart-strings—felt the tingling of the blood in his fingers’ ends, and could not fail to enjoy the delightful silence of universal and spontaneous admiration. The eloquence of these two men was not of that school which deals in thundergusts of word-painting, devoid of reason, sense, or consistency. Their ideas are always comely, well-proportioned, clear in outline and yet not angular in structure. They spoke for God and humanity—for liberty—for love—for law. They did not pervert their great gifts from the purposes that Nature intended. They used their magic power to smooth and soften the rough, hard places of human life, to promote all ends and objects catholic, worthy, commendable—to charm and persuade the morose and unwilling—to denounce like Nathan—to warn like Cassandra—to encourage like an angel of light. When either of them spoke, he seemed to realize the sublimest purpose of his mission; and condensed his giant electric power, as the heat charges the summer cloud with the bolts that are soon to flash and shiver.
Prentiss died in the same year that Grady was born; and when he first closed his brilliant career at forty-two years of age, the second was but a smiling infant six weeks old. Each, cut off before he had reached the zenith, was
A mighty vessel foundered in the calm,
Its freight half given to the world.