No sadder news ever fell upon the ears of this people than the announcement that “Henry Grady is dead!” It staggered our people like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky.
His death took place at the family residence in Atlanta at 3:40 o’clock Monday morning, December 22. While on a visit to Boston, where he delivered the grandest speech of his life, he took cold, and being ill before he left home, he was prostrated on his return home, his sickness culminating in pneumonia and death. He was thirty-eight years old at the time of his death, and no private citizen at that age ever attained the renown that Grady had. As an orator and journalist he was without a peer; gifted above his fellows to sway men by his pen or his voice, he won the applause and admiration and love of his countrymen wherever he came in contact with them. His young life and genius had been devoted to deeds of kindness, peace, unity and charity. Selfishness did not enter his heart, that always beat in response to the woes and sufferings of his fellow men.
There was a charm and sparkle about his writings that never failed to captivate the senses, please and entertain. The South lost one of her brightest minds and stanchest champions in the death of Henry Grady. There is no man that can take his place in the rare gifts that so befittingly endowed him in the grand work in which he was engaged. His loss is an irreparable one. Sorrow and gloom pervade the hearts of our people over this sad event. We may not understand how one so superbly gifted, with capacities for the accomplishment of so much good in the world, is taken, and many who cumber the earth and are stumbling blocks, are left, but we know the hand of Providence is behind it all, and He is too wise to err, too good to be unkind.
Grand and noble Grady, we mourn your death; but we know a soul so radiant with love for humanity, is now at rest with the redeemed.
GEORGIA’S NOBLE SON.
From the “Madison Advertiser.”
In view of the innumerable, heartfelt and touching memorials to this gifted child of genius, anything that we might add would be as Hyperion to a Satyr. But moved by a feeling of profound grief at our’s and the Nation’s loss, we claim the privilege of giving, as humble members of the craft, expression to our high regard for the character of Georgia’s noble son, and mingle a tear with those of the entire country upon the grave of a great and good man.
In early life he manifested a ripeness and decision of purpose in selecting a calling for which he conceived he had an aptitude. Nor was his judgment erroneous, for, with rare genius, coupled with energy and untiring application, he soon found a place amongst the first journalists of the country. How, with his gifted pen, he convinced the judgment, moved the emotions and sympathies, inspired to lofty resolve and the cultivation of gentle kindness, none knew better than his constant readers.