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
I knew Henry W. Grady well, and I loved him. To me his death is
a personal grief. He had been my friend for more than
twenty-three years. Well do I remember the day I joined his
class in our University. Well do I picture his friendly presence
as he bade me welcome and invited me to his home. Well do I
recall our meeting in our college societies. Our plans, our
struggles, our defeats and our triumphs there. Since that time,
I have sat with him around social boards. He has been time and
again an honored and a welcomed guest in my house. I shall miss
him there. We have been together in public enterprises, we have
met in the busy marts of men. We have worked side by side, and
we have differed upon questions of policy, but in all these
differences he has been my friend. I loved him, and deplore his
death.
We shall erect in this city a monument to commemorate his many
virtues, and to hold him up as an example before the young and
those who come after us; but however exalted that monument may
be, and however near the skys it may reach, the greatest and
best monument to us who knew him will be the memory of his many
virtues which we shall always treasure in our hearts.
Sink, thou of nobler light.
The land will mourn thee in its darkening hour;
Its heavens grow gray at thy retiring power;
Thou stirring orb of mind, thou beacon power,
Be thy great memory still a guardian might,
When thou art gone from sight.
Judge Emory Speer was on the list of speakers to follow Mr.
Brown, but did not reach the city in time to take part in the
exercises.
SPEECH OF HON. ALBERT COX.
Twenty-three years ago, poor and painfully uncertain of even a
broken part of education, but shortly from farm and camp and
captivity, broken-hearted and distrusting all things, lonesome
in a strange place, two companions met me at Athens and made me
feel at home. One of them mourns to-day with me the death of the
other.
I look across the many years as across a wide and misty river
made up of many streams, and recall the sunny face, the glowing
eye, the engaging smile, the warm hand formed; it seemed to
assure a friend of love with its very clasp—the happy-hearted,
the happy-making Henry Grady.
Treasured by his companions are traditions that his generous
hands were helpful even then. It is known that his appeal to the
“Great Old Commoner” kept a child of the State to the breast of
its own Alma Mater. It is known that he led the relief corps of
kindness to the aid of maimed veterans shivering in bitter
winter at the old rock college. To suggest such deeds seemed
natural to his heart, and to do them nobly seemed inherent to
his hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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