He was fond, as I have said, of Dickens, but his favorite novel, above all others, was Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.” His own daring imagination fitted somewhat into the colossal methods of Hugo, and his sympathies enabled him to see in the character of Jean Valjean a type of the pathetic struggle for life and justice that is going on around us every day. Mr. Grady read between the lines and saw beneath the surface, and he was profoundly impressed with the strong and vital purpose of Hugo’s book. Its almost ferocious protest against injustice, and its indignant arraignment of the inhumanity of society, stirred him deeply. Not only the character of Jean Valjean, but the whole book appealed to his sense of the picturesque and artistic. The large lines on which the book is cast, the stupendous nature of the problem it presents, the philanthropy, the tenderness—all these moved him as no other work of fiction ever did. Mr. Grady’s pen was too busy to concern itself with matters merely literary. He rarely undertook to write what might be termed a literary essay; the affairs of life—the demands of the hour—the pressure of events—precluded this; but all through his lectures and occasional speeches (that were never reported), there are allusions to Jean Valjean, and to Victor Hugo. I have before me the rough notes of some of his lectures, and in these appear more than once picturesque allusions to Hugo’s hero struggling against fate and circumstance. V. The home-life of Mr. Grady was peculiarly happy. He was blessed, in the first place, with a good mother, and he never grew away from her influence in the smallest particular. When his father was killed in the war, his mother devoted herself the more assiduously to the training of her children. She molded the mind and character of her brilliant son, and started him forth on a career that has no parallel in our history. To that mother his heart always turned most tenderly. She had made his boyhood bright and happy, and he was never tired of bringing up recollections of those wonderful days. On one occasion, the Christmas before he died, he visited his mother at the old home in Athens. He returned brimming over with happiness. To his associates in the _Constitution_ office he told the story of his visit, and what he said has been recorded by Mrs. Maude Andrews Ohl, a member of the editorial staff. “Well do I remember,” says Mrs. Ohl, “how he spent his last year’s holiday season, and the little story he told me of it as I sat in his office one morning after New Year’s.