From the “Cuthbert Liberal.”
In the death of Henry W. Grady, Georgia loses one of her most gifted sons. Though but a young man he had already acquired a name that will live as long as Americans love liberty or humanity loves charity. Though in point of years but just above the horizon of fame’s vast empyrean, his sun shone with the splendor and brilliancy usually reached at the zenith. As journalist, he was without a peer in his own loved Southland. As orator, none since the death of the gifted Prentiss had, at his age, won such renown. He loved Georgia, he loved the South, but his big heart and soul encompassed his whole country. As patriot, his widespread arms took in at one embrace the denizens upon the borders of the frozen lakes and the dwellers among the orange groves that girt the Mexic sea. He gave his life away in a masterful effort to revive peace and good will between sections estranged by passion and prejudice, and races made envious of each other by selfish intermeddling of those who would perpetuate strife to gratify their own greed. As neighbor and friend, those who knew him best loved him most. Wherever suffering or poverty pinched humanity, there his heart beat in sympathy and there his hand dispensed charity’s offerings without stint. Though we have differed with him in many things, the grave now holds all our differences and our tears blot out the bitterness of words or thoughts of the past. May the God in whom he trusted dispense grace, mercy and peace to the widow and orphans, whose grief and sorrow none but they can know.
A RESPLENDENT RECORD.
From the “Madison Madisonian.”
It is almost impossible to realize that Henry Grady is dead; that the eager, restless hands are stilled, and the great heart pulseless forevermore. The soul turned sick at the tidings, and a wave of anguish choked all utterance save lamentation alone. His people mourn his passing with one mighty voice, and like Rachel weeping in the wilderness, refuse to be comforted.
It seems a grief too heavy to be borne, and as lasting as the everlasting hills; but when time shall have laid its soothing hand upon our woe, there will succeed a sensation of exultance and exaltation, the natural consequence of a contemplation and appreciation of the briefness and brilliancy of his course, and the proportions and perfection of his handiwork.
To few men has it been given to live as Grady lived; to still less to die as Grady died, in the flush flood-tide of achievement, laying down sword and buckler, the victory won, and bowing farewell while yet the thunder-gust of plaudits shook the arena like a storm. He flamed like a meteor athwart the night and vanished in focal mid-zenith, leaving the illimitable void unstarred by an equal, whose rippling radiance, flashing in splendor from its myriad facets, might gladden our sublimated vision.
And what of good he accomplished, all his claim to renown, and the sole and simple cause of endearing him to mankind, rested upon one trait alone, one Christ-like attribute and actuating motive. He held but one creed and preached but one gospel—the gospel of love. “Little children, love one another,” said, now nearly a score of centuries since, the carpenter of Nazareth, and with this text—this first and greatest and most divine of all the commandments—for a wizard’s wand, our modern Merlin unlocked hearts and insured the hearty clasping of palms from one end to the other of this broad land.