“ Nothing in the history of human speech will equal the stately steppings of his eloquence into glory. In a single night he caught the heart of the country into its warm embrace, and leaped from a banquet revelry into national fame. It is, at last, the crowning evidence of his genius, that he held to the end, unbroken, the high fame so easily won, and sweeping from triumph unto triumph, with not one leaf of his laurels withered by time or staled by circumstance, died on yesterday—the foremost orator of all the world. ”

“ I should speak of his humanity—his almost inspired sympathies, his sweet philanthropy and the noble heartfulness that ran like a silver current through his life. His heart was the furnace where he fashioned all his glowing speech. Love was the current that sent his golden sentences pulsing through the world, and in the honest throb of human sympathies he found the anchor that held him steadfast to all things great and true. He was the incarnate triumph of a heartful man.
I thank God, as I stand above my buried friend, that there is not one ignoble memory in all the shining pathway of his fame! ”

“ Temples, arches and columns may crumble to pieces and be swept into the sea of oblivion; nature may decay and races of men come and go like the mists of the morning before the rising sun, but the proud monuments of Henry Grady’s mind will survive the wrecks of matter and the shocks of time.
On the Piedmont heights peacefully sleeps the freshness of the heart of the New South, cut down in the grandeur of his fame and in the meridian of his powers, in the glory of his life and in the richest prime of his royal manhood. ”

“ He stood the peer of any in the world, and was the greatest journalist in the South. His pen was as eloquent as his tongue, and from the closet as well as from the platform his words came with vivifying power, refreshing and inspiring.
Death struck him down from the lofty pinnacle of fame, to which his eloquence had so swiftly upborne him. A young man, he had already reached a height that would have dazzled a weaker soul, and he has fallen in the midst of his triumph, while yet the plaudits of tens of thousands from every part of this country rang fainter and fainter on his dying ear. ”

“ Made fatherless in youth by the cruel ravage of war, he struck out with a stout heart and strong hands for success—how well he achieved it, the praises showered upon him from every quarter forcibly demonstrate the fact! Who has not felt the warmth of his sunny nature?—it glows in every stroke of his pen, and shines in all his eloquent utterances, and brightens his memory as his name and triumphs pass into history. Mr. Grady, by his pen and eloquence, has done more for the South than any other of her sons, and their love and appreciation is attested in their universal sorrow. ”

“ The most brilliant light in Southern journalism is veiled in darkness—a manly heart has ceased to beat; the tongue that has electrified thousands with magic eloquence is silent forever; the fingers that wielded the pen of genius and never traced a line in bitterness or malice, but was always uplifted in behalf of charity, love and good will, in behalf of progress, industry and enterprise, in behalf of the South and her institutions, his State and her people, are cold in death ”

“ Every hill that invests it is hallowed to you by the blood of your brothers who died for your victory, and doubly hallowed to us by the blow of those who died hopeless, but undaunted, in defeat—sacred soil to all of us—rich with memories that make us purer and stronger and better—silent but staunch witnesses in its red desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless glory of American arms—speaking an eloquent witness in its white peace and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American States and the imperishable brotherhood of the American people. ”

“ Beneath this splendor is the canker of a disturbed and oppressed people. It was from the golden age of Augustus that the Roman empire staggered to its fall. The integrity of the States and the rights of the people! Stand there—there is safety—there is the broad and enduring brotherhood—there, less of glory, but more of honor! Put patriotism above partisanship—and wherever the principle that protects the States against the centralists, and the people against the plutocrats, may lead, follow without fear or faltering—for there the way of duty and of wisdom lies! ”

“ As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day—when the old world will come to marvel and to learn, amid our gathered treasures—let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill—serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory—blazing out the path and making clear the way, up which all nations of the earth must come in God’s appointed time! ”

“ Can it be that the brightest star in the galaxy of our great luminaries is blotted out and stricken from its orbit just as it was rising in full career to the zenith of usefulness, influence and splendor? Can it be that the most brilliant meteor which has flashed across our sky for a generation has fallen to earth literally burned to ashes by its own fiery contact with the grosser air and elements of the natural world? Can it be that the light has gone out of the most magnetic mind and the spirit gone from the most resistless personality in this sovereign State? ”

“ The uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth. France, Brazil—these are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression, this is our mission. And we shall not fail. God has sown in our soil the seed of his millennial harvest, and he will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until his full and perfect day has come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, all the way, aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. ”

“ The germ of the best patriotism is in the love that a man has for the home he inhabits, for the soil he tills, for the trees that gives him shade, and the hills that stand in his pathway. I teach my son to love Georgia—to love the soil that he stands on—the body of my old mother—the mountains that are her springing breasts, the broad acres that hold her substance, the dimpling valleys in which her beauty rests, the forests that sing her songs of lullaby and of praise, and the brooks that run with her rippling laughter. ”

“ In his life every element of success was materialized, an energy as untiring as the tides of the sea; a courage like the eagle’s that gazes with eye undimmed upon the glare of the noonday sun; a genius so comprehensive that it grasped with equal facility the smallest detail and the broadest of human issues, and above all, a patriotism pure, heroic, unsectional, drawing its inspiration from the sacred fountain head of American liberty, and spreading its benign influence wherever the Constitution is obeyed and the rights of mankind respected. ”

“ To exalt the hearthstone—to strengthen the home—to build up the individual—to magnify and defend the principle of local self-government. Not in deprecation of the Federal government, but to its glory—not to weaken the Republic, but to strengthen it—not to check the rich blood that flows to its heart, but to send it full and wholesome from healthy members rather than from withered and diseased extremities.
The man who kindles the fire on the hearthstone of an honest and righteous home burns the best incense to liberty. He does not love mankind less who loves his neighbor most. ”

“ On the mild Christmas morning the heart of Georgia is bowed in sorrow over the death of her favorite son. It seems, indeed, a mockery that amidst the joys and festivities of the Christmas time, the dark shadow of the relentless foe of man should intrude his presence and take from our land one who was its brightest hope, its strongest support!
And yet it is true. Henry Grady is dead! The orator, the journalist, the poet by nature, the man of the people, is dead! We cannot realize it. So bright in his strong young manhood but one short week ago, now folded in the arms of death! ”

“ I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hill—a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men—that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier’s death. ”

“ It is on the young men and women—the generation bred in the chill atmosphere of unbelief—that atheism will do its worst. With no traditions in which to guide their faith, no altar before which they can do reverence, no ideal to which their eyes can turn, no standard lofty enough to satisfy, or steadfast enough to assure—with no uplifting that is not limited, no aspiration that has wings, and no enthusiasm that is not absurd—with life but a fever that kindles in the cradle and dies in the grave,—truly atheism meets youth with a dread prospect, sullen, storm-swept, hopeless. ”

“ Out of my life into the beautiful beyond have passed the two friends I loved best on earth—the chivalrous Gordon, the peerless Grady. God keep my friends and lead them gently through the meadow-lands where the river flows in song eternal. I know that near its crystal banks, where the birds sing sweetest and flowers bloom brightest, they have clasped hands in blessed and happy reunion. The love with which Henry Grady inspired his friends has never been surpassed by mortal man. Beautiful and touching have been the expressions of devotion that have come to his family. ”

“ If, sir, any man will point out to me a path down which the white people of the South divided may walk in peace and honor, I will take that path though I took it alone—for at the end, and nowhere else, I fear, is to be found the full prosperity of my section and the full restoration of this Union. But, sir, if the negro had not been enfranchised, the South would have been divided and the Republic united. His enfranchisement—against which I enter no protest—holds the South united and compact. What solution, then, can we offer for the problem? ”

“ Against it, numbers and corruption cannot prevail. It cannot be forbidden in the law or divorced in force. It is the inalienable right of every free community—and the just and righteous safeguard against an ignorant or corrupt suffrage. It is on this, sir, that we rely in the South. Not the cowardly menace of mask or shotgun; but the peaceful majesty of intelligence and responsibility, massed and unified for the protection of its homes and the preservation of its liberty. That, sir, is our reliance and our hope, and against it all the powers of the earth shall not prevail. ”

“ Standing in the presence of this multitude, sobered with the responsibility of the message I deliver to the young men of the South, I declare that the truth above all others to be worn unsullied and sacred in your hearts, to be surrendered to no force, sold for no price, compromised in no necessity, but cherished and defended as the covenant of your prosperity, and the pledge of peace to your children, is that the white race must dominate forever in the South, because it is the white race, and superior to that race by which its supremacy is threatened. ”

“ And though the sea shall not render back for them the Arguses that went down in their ship, let us build for them in the land they love so well a stately and enduring temple—its pillars founded in justice, its arches springing to the skies, its treasuries filled with substance; liberty walking in its corridors; art adorning its walls; religion filling its aisles with incense,—and here let them rest in honorable peace and tranquillity until God shall call them hence to “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” ”

“ The old-time South is fading from observance, and the mellow church-bells that called the people to the temples of God are being tabooed and silenced. Let us, my countrymen, here to-day—yet a homogeneous and God-fearing people—let us highly resolve that we will carry untainted the straight and simple faith—that we will give ourselves to the saving of the old-fashioned, that we will wear in our hearts the prayers we learned at our mother’s knee, and seek no better faith than that which fortified her life through adversity, and led her serene and smiling through the valley of the shadow. ”

“ He was, at this writing, a plain, staid farmer, content among his cattle and clover. And yet that sharp, briny, saline flavor, thrown on the bosom of the still country breeze, put a restless devil in his breast. It was as if a born gallant, exiled for a decade to the heart of some desert, should, near the expiration of his sentence, stumble upon a cambric handkerchief, redolent with the perfume of a lady’s boudoir. In less than two years after the sight or rather the smell of that box my friend had sold his plantation, convinced his wife, and gone to the ocean again. ”

“ No eloquence has equaled his since Sargent Prentiss faded from the earth. No pen has plowed such noble furrow in his country’s fallow fields since the wrist of Horace Greeley rested; no age of the Republic has witnessed such marvelous conjunction of a magical pen with the velvet splendor of a mellow tongue, and although the warlike rival of these wondrous forces never rose within his life, it is writ of all his living, that the noble fires of his genius were lighted in his boyhood from the gleam that died upon his father’s sword. ”

“ The people who hate and fear the South are given over to believe a lie. It is their stock in trade; it is the life blood of their political partisanship, and though one rose from the dead, they would not believe. But he had done and was doing, and had he lived would have brought to a marvelous fruition something of far more practical value. He had made known to the world the marvelous resources of the South, and gotten the ear of capital and enterprise and brought, and was bringing, the enginery of its power to unlock the storehouses of an untold wealth. ”

“ The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because through the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were beaten. ”

“ Outside stood the master, strong and wholesome and upright; wearing no man’s collar; with no mortgage on his roof, and no lien on his ripening harvest; pitching his crops in his own wisdom, and selling them in his own time in his chosen market; master of his lands and master of himself. Near by stood his aged father, happy in the heart and home of his son. And as they started to the house the old man’s hands rested on the young man’s shoulder, touching it with the knighthood of the fourth commandment, and laying there the unspeakable blessing of an honored and grateful father. ”

“ Grady loved humanity, and love with him was not weak sentimentality, but strong, over-mastering passion. He loved humanity, not in the abstract, but in the person of those members of it who came within reach of him. And this love to them was not a mere sentiment, but a real passion, to which he gave expression in his never-tiring acts of devotion and his ceaseless efforts to aid them in every way and by every means that lay in his power. It was thus that he grappled his friends to him with hoops of steel and held them in a grasp which nothing could loosen. ”

“ Yesterday Henry Grady, a young, strong man, rejoicing in his growing strength, with the blood of life and power and hope bounding through his veins, flushed with the triumph of new and splendid achievement and returned to his home with the proud burden of fresh laurels well won, was swiftly struck down by that relentless power and taken from the world he graced and lighted, to be known and heard no more. ”

“ Whatever man the people worship is worthy of a place in our Pantheon. The people are the best judges of a man, and when the common people pay tribute to the worth of any man well known to them, we are ready to lift our hats and acknowledge his title to greatness. Any man who has the enthusiastic admiration of his own people is worthy of any honor.
The South has many brilliant writers, but none of them have ever made the columns of a newspaper glisten and glow and hold in magnetic enchantment the mind of the reader as Henry Grady did. ”

“ No victor, fresh from the bloody field of battle, was ever more deserving of his laurel wreaths than he of the chaplets we can only lay upon his grave. The lips that pleaded so eloquently for peace and union are stilled in death, and the hand that penned so many beautiful words for the encouragement of his people moves no more. A sense of peculiar personal loss is upon us. The old men have lost a son, the young men a brother. Atlanta mourns her foremost citizen, the State a devoted son, the South an able defender and the Nation an honored citizen. Our matchless Grady is no more. ”