From the “Thomasville Enterprise.”
Thackeray, the greatest of English novelists, in the concluding words of Pendennis, says: “I have not painted a hero, only a man and a brother.” When Henry W. Grady made his first appearance before the public as a lecturer, his subject was the words that begin this article—“Just Human.” This was years ago, when he was only known to the world as a brilliant young journalist, and even then his fame for quick perception, incisive utterance and felicitous manner, was only begun. Later years added to that fame, and with each year, there seemed to come to him a wider range of ideas, and a bolder conception of the most effectual way to put those ideas into burning, glowing language.
After he had made his memorable speech before the New England Society in New York, each succeeding one only raised him higher in public esteem as a matchless, a magnetic orator, who could wield human hearts as he would. Through all these speeches, and in all that he ever wrote, there lingers, like a sweet incense, this thought, that he recognized that men were “Just Human,” and entitled to all that charity could offer in extenuation of their faults.
There is not a heart in all the world that has received one pang from aught that Henry Grady ever wrote or said; his utterances, whether from the rostrum or through the columns of his paper, always tended to make the world better, and his ambition seemed to be to smooth away the differences that annoy, and the bitternesses that gall. There is no man in all the country that can take up his work where he left it.
Where can we find the same impassioned eloquence that swayed, despite its force, as gently as the summer breezes that come across fields of ripe grain?
Where can we find the same acute feeling for the sorrows and sufferings of men and women, “Just Human,” the same sweet pleading for their extenuation or their amelioration?
When the epitaph over his grave comes to be written, no better rendering of the true greatness of the departed could be made than is contained in the suggestive name of his first lecture, “Just Human,” for the noble instinct that taught him to plead so eloquently for the failings of his fellow men, taught him to enter the Divine presence, asking for himself that mercy he had asked for others.