Joel Chandler Harris' life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches
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Joel Chandler Harris' life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches
Grady, Henry Woodfin, 1850-1889
grazed there lowed their welcome, the chickens cackled to see him come,
and the colt capered nimbly in the green expanse of barley—children of
his dreams all, but all grateful and restful to a busy mind.
II.
In this hurriedly written sketch, which is thrown together to meet the
modern exigencies of publishing, the round, and full, and complete
biography cannot be looked for. There is no time here for the selection
and arrangement in an orderly way of the details of this busy and
brilliant life. Under the circumstances, even the hand of affection can
only touch it here and there so swiftly and so lightly that the random
result must be inartistic and unsatisfactory. It was at such moments as
these—moments of hurry and high-pressure—that Mr. Grady was at his best.
His hand was never surer,—the machinery of his mind was never more
responsive to the tremendous demands he made on it,—than when the huge
press of the _Constitution_ was waiting his orders; when the forms were
waiting to be closed, when the compositors were fretting and fuming for
copy, and when, perhaps, an express train was waiting ten minutes over
its time to carry the _Constitution_ to its subscribers. All his
faculties were trained to meet emergencies; and he was never happier
than when meeting them, whether in a political campaign, in conventions,
in local issues, or in the newspaper business as correspondent or
managing editor. Pressed by the emergency of his death, which to me was
paralyzing, and by the necessity of haste, which, at this juncture, is
confusing, these reminiscences have taken on a disjointed shape sadly at
variance with the demands of literary art. Let me, therefore, somewhere
in the middle, begin at the beginning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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