Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

2 ceed in its cultivation from a financial point- of view, is not to be wondered at; to a man like Henry Grady financial success is almost unknown. He did not “make money” at anything-. He gave too freely of the little he did have, and he never, during his whole life, learned a single lesson of economy,-nor did he ever seek to learn the value of a dollar save in its power to alleviate the wants of others. From his earliest childhood he was ever tender of the needs of others; on the old plantation home near Athens, where he was born, he knew and loved every negro on' the place; from the age of two, he had a devoted little attendant in the person of a ne gro boy, “Isaac” by name, whom he claimed as a brother, and during his babyhood he actually re sented the fact that Isaac wasn’t really his very own I This affection for the negro, and with it a thorough understanding of their needs, as well as an appreciation of all that was difficult in their lives, was characteristic of Mr. Grady’s life. The thought of oppression and of poverty, of discord or of strife, was always most repugnant to Mr. Grady; as a child, a boy and a young man, he ever sought to make rough places smooth for all around him. Jovial and approachable in dispo sition he was a conversationalist of the rarest charm— not a monologist, for although himself a brilliant talker, he possessed that rarer gift of be ing a “brilliant” listener. It was this social element, this tendency to listen as well as to speak, to encourage others to know as well as to seek himself that in a great measure, unfitted him for a reportorial position. Mr. Grady was distinctively an editor; a leader, a teacher and a man of affairs. His impressions of conditions were so vital that their value to a current publica tion could not be overestimated, but these impres sions were of necessity so tempered by environments that it was difficult to preserve them. His speeches on various occasions were almost invariably im promptu, and no matter how carefully he might prepare an address, it was almost inevitable that some trivial circumstance would result in his chang ing his preconceived line of thought, and branch ing out into an entirely new field. This fact has prevented a full compilation of his addresses, and the written work which he has left is chiefly what has appeared editorially and what has been caught here and there by some stenographic report of his speeches. Henry Grady was distinctively a man fitted to cope with great emergencies or sensations; if any such occasion arose it was Mr. Grady’s wish to report such a one himself—his wonderful skill in writing of the Charleston earthquake may be recalled as one of his most notable efforts. But there are practical evidences of Mr. Grady’s work to be found on every hand in the city of At lanta where he made his home for the greater part of his life. It w-as he who conceived and brought to completion the Piedmont Exposition held in At lanta in 1888, and his hand was behind the great cotton exposition held in Atlanta in 1881. A re markable fact about the Piedmont Exposition is that there was about $20,000 cleared by the man agement, a result almost without precedent in Southern fairs. It was Mr. Grady who organized the Piedmont Chautauqua; he also raised the funds for the Con federate Veterans Home in Atlanta, which is one of the most satisfactory homes for old soldiers in the country; Mr. Grady also organized a movement for putting up a building for the Young Men’s Christian Association, which building now stands as one of the handsomest monuments to this great, unselfish and earnest gentlemen. Mr. Grady’s work for many institutions of At lanta cannot be mentioned in detail but it is safe to say that there are very few which do not owe either their inception or some material aid in time of need to this guiding hand. Os the people, for the people and with the peo ple might be claimed as Mr. Grady’s creed—the cry of a human need never fell on a deaf ear when directed to him, and his was a soul which leaned outward to the darkness. There is told a wonder ful story of Mr. Grady’s power over the people of Atlanta and of the force for good which that power 'The Golden Age for April 19, 1906. was. Some years before his untimely death there came a bitter cold Christmas to Atlanta—one of the coldest ever known in Georgia—and with it came the knowledge that the poor of the city were in direct need, killed with a sense of what was demanded of his people Mr. Grady determined to use his paper—The Constitution—as a medium to bring relief where it was so sorely needed. With his trenchant pen he wrote on Christmas eve an editorial which so stirred the hearts of men that on the day following, which was Sunday, contribu tions for the poor began to pour into the Constitu tion office. From early morning wagon loads of coal, of food, of every sort of provisions filled the streets, and by an organized effort these supplies were so distributed that by the nightfall of that Christmas day there was not a single family in the city of Atlanta in need of food or fuel. The un derlying secret of the success of Mr. Grady’s ef forts in this particular case may be said to be the same as that which dominated all his work—he wrote and spoke and labored for the things he knew needed improvement. He went himself into the homes of the poor and saw the need; he went himself into the halls of justice, into the highways and byways of life and saw the needs, the weakness the struggles of humanity, and then he acted! Not spasmodically, not theoretically, not unthinkingly, but with the calm brain, clear judgment and with an earnest Christian soul striving to do right. Os the private life of Henry Grady it seems al most sacrilege to speak—so perfect an element needs no touch however tender; no comment however kind. Much of his work was done at his own home near the beloved wife whose very presence was in inspiration. When most beset by professional cares and when endeavoring to write some particu larly difficult articlee it was to his wife’s own room that Mr. Grady turned, and there with closed doors would he evolve some brilliant and effectual specimen of almost classical writing. His wonderful power to enter into the lives and emotions of others would have made of him a great novelist had he turned his attention to purely lit erary work. But Mr. Grady was essentially a man of action, and fiction could form no part of his life or of his writings. All of his lectures were direc ted toward the betterment and toward the fuller understanding of the South; at the Augusta (Ga.) Exposition held in 1887, Mr. Grady made a stir ring address in which he reviewed the possibilities and the prospects of the South. The following ex pressions may be considered as the very essence of his sentiments: “It may be,” he said, “that the last hope of saving the old-fashioned on this continent will be lodged with the South. Strange admixtures have brought strange results in the North. The anarchist and the atheist walk abroad in the cities, and defying government, deny God. Culture has refined for itself new and strange re ligions from strong old creeds. Let us, my country men, resolve 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. Let us keep sacred the Sabbath of God in its purity, and have no city so great, or village so small that every Sun day morning shall not steal forth over towns and meadows the golden benediction of the bells as they summon the people to the churches of their fath ers and ring out in praise of God and the power of His might.” Will it not prove helpful to the people of today to remember the life of a man like this? Will it not seem worth while to struggle onward toward the light with the thought of this noble life as an incentive to further effort? The people of the South need ideals at all times but never more so than they do today and we believe each individual will feel a certain personal stimulus in this appre ciation of Henry W. Grady, of Georgia, a great soul in whose individuality we can “see the archetypal man and what might be the amplitude of Nature’s first design.” It is a great deal easier to do that which God gives us to do, no matter how hard it is, than to face the responsibility of not doing it.—J. R. Miller. News of the Week. Carolus Duran has finished painting his portrait of the pope, which ex-Empress Eugenie will present as a wedding present to Princess Ena, fiancee of King Alfonso. Queen Wilhelmina, of Holland, is bearing the cost of conceits given by well-known singers in the slum quarters of the Hague. Only the poorest peo ple are allowed to attend. Governor Slepzoff, of Tver, was assassinated April 7. A bomb was thrown into his carriage, tearing his body to pieces. The perpetrator, whose name is not known, has been arrested. After much thought and many calculations, Sir Thomas Lipton has at last come to the conclusion that he will have another try for the American cup, and it is stated that Niylve already is at work de signing Shamrock IV. According to Hungarian journals, the financial ruin of the Archduchess Clotolde is complete. Ex perts charged to put her affairs in order declare that there are heavy liabilities. It is alleged that the aged archduchess’ fortune was managed by in capable functionaries. The first Mother’s Congress of Georgia—the first ever held in the South—will be in session in Atlanta for three days, April 23, 24 and 25. A great num ber of prominent women from all the states south of the Ohio and east- of the Mississippi rivers, will attend the convention. It is said, and so far it has not been officially denied, that an agreement has been made between the Kaiser, and the Czar whereby Russia will trans fer to Germany her Polish provinces in return for a very large amount of cash, of which the Russian treasury is sorely in need. Ex-President Grover Cleveland, in the role of a social economist, has met failure. His settlement farm for boys has been sold and the youngsters upon whom the former president of the United States proposed to work an interesting experiment in economics, have been sent back to their homes. It is predicted the Standard Oil Company will soon own all the valuable lumber in North Carolina. Already this company has acquired a number of great tracts of timber land and is negotiating for a great deal more. The purpose of this is to use the pine for the small boxes in which are placed the oil cans containing foreign bound oil. At an audience granted Francis Kossuth by Em peror Francis Joseph, a compromise was reached on the Hungarian question. The Hungarians abandon the demand for a separate army and concede uni versal suffrage, while the Emperor dismisses Pre mier Fejevary, and grants a parliamentary cabi net. Twenty-seven sub-chiefs of the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache Indian tribes, held a council at the Anadarko Indian Agency early in this month and drafted a petition addressed to President Roosevelt, asking that their remaining pastures of 505,000 acres be sold at auction to the highest bidders. This was the largest council of sub-chiefs held in the southwest in twenty years. Pi of. I . M. Rea, director of the museum of the College of Charleston, has made a most valuable find in the twenty-first volume of Eliot’s Herbar ium, of interest to all scholars in botany. In a mass of rubbish in the basement of the library, which had been ordered burnt, Prof. Rea discov ered the volume which has proven to be a find of such gieat interest and importance to the scien tific world.