vivid an imagination, so fluent a speech, so lavish a diction and so delightful a humor as Henry W. Grady. No magician ever wrought subtler enchantments with his wand than Grady with his words. No artist ever mingled colors with such an eye for lights and shadows. It was the distinction of Sir Walter Scott to be called "the Wizard of the North," and Grady, for resources of expression no less wonderful, may be called "the Wizard of the South."

But Mr. Grady had little use for what is usually the orator's master weapon, denunciation. He caught no prayer for vengeance from his father's sword. He imbibed no angry curdle at his mother's breast. He could grow amazingly eloquent in arousing the passions of men, for he was master of the art of appeal. But in all his speeches it will be hard to find one single note of bitterness. He neither scourged Catiline nor denounced Philip. This was not because he lacked courage or countenanced fraud. He had other methods of unmasking his country's enemies. It was rather because he was essentially the peacemaker. From the very cradle he had been in training for the great mission which was to carry him to Plymouth Rock. And inclined by nature to the dulcet strains of the beatitudes rather than to the forked lightnings of the law, he found his prototype not in the stern prophet who halted the chariot of Ahab, but in the beloved disciple who caught the celestial rapture of the New Jerusalem.

If Mr. Grady had bestowed some thought upon the various problems which were vexing the public mind prior to his famous speech in New York, he now redoubled the zeal with which he sought to master the vexed questions; and such was his success that in none of the great

public addresses which he delivered during the three years which followed did he fail to show the results of his laborious investigations. He brought all the resources of his mind to bear upon his studies; and choice as was the rhetoric in which he clothed his brillant imagery, it was by no means the greatest charm of his wonderful efforts.

Superficial critics who mistake transparent depths for shallow surfaces and muddy pools for profound seas have hastily imagined that Mr. Grady was too rhetorical to be deep. Such an absurd criticism hardly needs to be noticed. It can not possibly be based upon an intimate study of Mr. Grady's speeches, and it probably grows out of the puerile notion that wisdom must always be dull. For any one who has carefully weighed the arguments and followed the thoughts of the great orator knows that his brilliant rhetoric was only the enamel which overlay the marble quarries, the phosphorescence upon the ocean waves. The man who would confuse Mr. Grady's eloquence with sophomoric bombast or schoolboy declamation would murder Cicero. Let him beware how he dips his pen in the vitriol lest he write his own decree of banishment. To compare Mr. Grady's eloquence with such Japanese juggling is like comparing summer fireflies with starry infinites, or Georgia junebugs with Grecian Junos.

CHAPTER XLIII.

H

How Grady Played Cromwell.

ENRY W. GRADY did the most audacious thing

on record in the legislative history of this State, when he marched upon the Capitol at the head of a regiment of rampant Democrats in the fall of 1884 and adjourned the Legislature of Georgia for the purpose of celebrating the election of President Cleveland.

On account of the uncertainty of the vote in New York State the result of the election, it will be remembered, was held in abeyance for days and days. The momentous issue depended on the outcome of the official count, and the barest majority was sufficient to swing the gigantic pendulum. The whole country was on tiptoe with excitement.

At last the gloriously good news came over the wires that New York State had gone safely Democratic, making Grover Cleveland the undisputed choice of the Electoral College.

The opportunity of celebrating the first real and recognized Democratic victory since the war was not lost in any part of the South; and bonfires and torchlight brigades were everyhere served up in honor of the great political event. But Atlanta was perhaps the reddest spot on the whole national map.

Mr. Grady was the first man in town to get the news. He was managing editor of the Constitution, and was seated at his desk on the fourth floor of the building grinding out editorials when the message came. Up he bounced from his chair like one possessed, and began to stir about the office in hot haste. He lost no time in spreading the alarm.

First he ordered out the Constitution's cannon and gave the signal to fire. Next he called up Chief Joyner of the fire department and caused the fire-bells to be rung with furious clamor; and the fire-bells soon started the steam whistles on numberless locomotives and stationary engines.

But another bright idea seized him. Rushing out on the street, he soon gathered together an assortment of Democratic volunteers numbering in all about two hundred strong; and putting himself at the head of this fearless column, he marched, banner in hand, toward the State Capitol, where the Legislature of Georgia was in session.

On reaching the door of the House of Representatives he brushed with cyclonic violence past the sargeant-atarms, who was too astonished to offer any show of resistance, and planting himself in the center of the main aisle before the speaker's desk, he exclaimed in trumpetlike tones:

"Mr. Speaker, a message from the American people." Speaker pro tem. Lucius M. Lamar, one of the most. rigid parliamentarians, but also one of the most enthusiastic Democrats, was in the chair at the time. He realized at once what the invasion meant, and losing sight of

his official obligation in his excess of Democratic joy, he replied:

"Let the message be received."

Thereupon Mr. Grady marched boldly up to the speaker's desk and, taking the gavel from the hands of the astonished presiding officer, rapped sternly for silence in the hall. When order was partially restored he said:

"In the name of Governor Cleveland, President-elect of the United States, I declare this body adjourned."

This announcement was the signal for such an outburst of enthusiasm as had never before shaken the walls of the State Capitol. In the wild delirium of the moment members leaped on top of their seats and sent their hats and their voices rolling toward the ceiling. Legislative formalities were completely forgotten and the day's session ended amid clamorous confusion.

Such ecstatic moments are rare in the history of commonwealths; and Georgia will certainly never lose this riotous ruby from her cluster of rich recollections.

Four years later Mr. Grady was ready for another Democratic celebration, and the Constitution's gallant little cannon which had done such heroic service in voicing the glad news in 1884 was brought out dressed and loaded for another series of volleys.

But the news this time was of an altogether different character and the expected ceremonies were called off. Mr. Harrison went in and Mr. Cleveland went out.

With humorous good-nature aglow on the keen-edge of his disappointment, Mr. Grady pulled out his pencil and scribbled on a sheet of paper this brave sentiment of selfrepression, which he pasted over the cannon's mouth: "A charge to keep I have."