tudes to rally in large numbers to the feast which was spread. Mr. Grady died soon afterwards and no effort was made to revive the Chautauqua at Salt Springs.

Still the idea had taken root and the Chautauquas which have since sprung up with such flourishing results in other parts of the State have derived existence largely from the parental inspiration of this initial enterprise.

Another favorite institution in Georgia which honors the heart as well as the head of this great man is the Confederate Soldiers' Home near Decatur.

Though not old enough to serve in the ranks, being only a youth when the war closed, Grady was characterized throughout life by an unflagging devotion to Lee's old veterans. He had lost his gallant father at Petersburg and his pious and patriotic mother had instilled into his mind with the first lessons of childhood the duty of helping those who by reason of misfortune were not able to help themselves. He was an avowed champion of the new order of things; but he loved the old civilization, the old plantation songs and lullabies, the old battle-flags, the old cause and, not the least of all, that nursery of the purest and best type of the Southern gentleman: “the old school."

Picking up one of the New York papers from the pile of exchanges on his desk one morning Mr. Grady saw that a citizen from Texas was making a canvass in the metropolis for funds with which to build a home for the old soldiers of his State. The effort appeared to be more energetic than fruitful; and while the comments of the press were not unfriendly there was an undercurrent of

feeling and an atmosphere of reserve in the expressions used which nettled Mr. Grady's spirit. It riled him to think of the crippled soldiers of the South begging for alms upon the curbstones of distant Babylons.

"I'll show them what can be done in Georgia," said he, throwing down the paper and calling in the stenographer. He thereupon dictated the double-leaded editorial which came out next morning under the caption:

"Major Walker, come home!"

This editorial fired the State from the mountains all the way to the seaboard. Other Georgia newspapers took up the refrain; and the money for building the Confederate Veterans' Home in Georgia was soon subscribed. Before the corner-stone was laid Grady died and after his death it was several years before the finishing touches were applied. On account of local prejudice the Legislature was at first reluctant to adopt the institution, but this unpatriotic bias was at last overcome and Georgia opened to her old soldiers the institution which Grady had founded.

But Grady did not confine his activities in behalf of Southern development to Georgia alone. He touched with his pen the Alabama coal-fields and the Florida orange-groves. There was literally no item in the catalogue of Southern resources on which he failed to enlarge.

He wrote for the magazines as well as for the columns of his own paper and he sought in every way possible, at home and abroad, to further the interests of the whole South, regardless of State lines.

But not by any means the least service which he rendered this section of the country was his brilliant work in

building up such an important and independent newspaper plant as The Constitution came to be under his progressive and prosperous management.

So thoroughly and so intimately did he live himself into the life of the South that even to-day there are thousands of improvements and reforms which silently suggest him; and no better inscription could be placed over his tomb in Westview Cemetery, where he sleeps almost in the very heart of the New South, than the epitaph which is chiseled over the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul's Cathedral in London: "If you seek his monument look around you."

Thus Joseph the Dreamer had became Joseph the Prince. He had climbed the palace steps into the nation's heart. And the scepter of his unabused authority was in very truth the wand of the Pharaohs! But he accomplished even more than all this; for when the South lay buried in the ashes of defeat he rolled away the gravestone, broke the seal, dismayed the guard and stood at the door of the sepulcher of the Old Regime: the Evangel of the Resurrection of the New.

CHAPTER XLII.

Grady as an Orator.

H

ENRY W. GRADY was an orator to the manner born. He belonged to the imaginative school represented by Sargeant S. Prentiss. But even the orator must await the call of occasion; and rare as were the gifts of Mr. Grady, he enjoyed no unusual reputation for eloquence until all at once he captivated his audience at the banquet of the New England Society of New York in 1886, and became as the result of an after-dinner speech the foremost living orator of all the section of country which had produced the greatest orators of the nation.

The surprise which his wonderful speech occasioned was equally as great at the South as at the North. For even within the borders of his own State he was little known as an orator except as he exemplified with his pen what Chancellor Walter B. Hill has aptly phrased, "the oratory of the editorial." Those who admired him most and who knew him best were little prepared for the electrical outburst of eloquence which shook the continent.

It is quite true that the oratorical genius of the young journalist began to forecast something unusual as far back as 1868. Colonel Albert H. Cox says that the commencement address which Mr. Grady-then barely eight

een-delivered at the time of his graduation from the State University was an unsurpassed effort. Moreover he had also delivered one or two lectures in Atlanta in furtherance of local interests which had been received with very great enthusiasm. And it could not be said. that the signboards along the highway were altogether lacking.

But in most of the public addresses which Mr. Grady delivered prior to his great achievement in New York his brilliant imagination and his playful sense of humor almost habitually inclined him toward the fanciful; and, instead of trying to resuscitate Demosthenes, he contented himself with less pretentious efforts. In the art of wordpainting he had no superior. He could draw the most exquisite pictures. And equally the master of those two effective weapons of speech, pathos and humor, he could sway his hearers at will between laughter and tears. His lecture on "Patchwork Palace," in which he portrayed the vicissitudes of an old man who, out of cast-off materials, built him an humble home, was an ideal portraiture, as rich in wholesome sentiment as in side-splitting humor. Perhaps no one could keep an impatient audience better entertained than Mr. Grady. And he needed no special preparation for the ordinary demand of public speaking. He possessed an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes. kept himself thoroughly posted on general topics. He spoke with the greatest ease; and, though he had not been trained with special reference to forensic tilts, he could face an adversary and meet an interruption with as much readiness as the most accomplished debater.

He

Undoubtedly the orator lay concealed under this prodigal wealth of resources. But as much as the people loved