“He has work yet to do,” said the physician, as the great orator lay dying. “Perhaps his work is finished,” replied Mr. Grady’s mother. She was right. To the physician, as to many others, it must have seemed that Mr. Grady’s work was just beginning; that not much had yet been accomplished. For he was young; only thirty-eight years old. He had never held a public office, and there is a current delusion that office is the necessary condition of success for those endowed with political talents. But Mr. Grady had done his work, and it was a great work, too. He had done more, perhaps, than any other man to destroy the lingering animosities of the war and re-establish cordial relations between North and South. His silvery speech and graphic imagery had opened the minds of thousands of influential men of the North to a truer conception of the South. He had shown them that the Old South was a memory only; the New South a reality. And he had done more than any other man to open the eyes of the North to the peerless natural advantages of his section, so that streams of capital began to flow southward to develop those resources.
He was a living example of what a plain citizen may do for his country without the aid of wealth, office or higher position than his own talents and earnest patriotism gave him.
Boston joins with Atlanta and the South in mourning the untimely death of this eloquent orator, statesmanlike thinker, able journalist and model citizen. He will long be affectionately remembered in this city and throughout the North.
A LOYAL UNIONIST.
From the “Chicago Times.”
Mr. Grady was a loyal Unionist. The son of a Union veteran, proud of his sire’s part in the battle-fields of the rebellion, could not be more so. He stood manfully against the race prejudice which would lash the negro or plunder or terrorize him, but he recognized fully the difficulties of the race problem, and would not blink the fact, which every Northern man who sojourns in the South soon learns, that safety, progress, peace, and prosperity for that section forbid that the mere numerical superiority of the blacks should authorize them to push the white man, with his superior capability for affairs, from the places where laws are made and executed. Mr. Grady looked upon the situation dispassionately and told the truth about it to Northern audiences.
He was an active force in the journalism of the South, where the journal is still regarded largely as an organ of opinion and the personality of the editor counts for much. He entered the newspaper field when the modern idea of news excellence had obtained a full lodgment at the North and at one or two places South of the Ohio, and while he loved to occupy the pulpit of the fourth page he was not unmindful of the demand for a thorough newspaper.