all the sentiment of his country and enriched the ripe vocabulary of the world. Nothing in the history of human speech will equal the stately steppings of his eloquence into glory. In a single night he caught the heart of the country into his warm embrace, and leaped from a banquet revelry into national fame. It is, at last, the crowning evidence of his genius, that he held to the end, unbroken, the high fame so easily won, and sweeping from triumph unto triumph, with not one leaf of his laurels withered by time or staled by circumstance, died on yesterday the foremost orator of all the world.

It is marvelous, past all telling, how he caught the heart of the country in the fervid glow of his own. All the forces of our statesmanship have not prevailed for union like the ringing speeches of this bright, magnetic man. His eloquence was the electric current over which the positive and negative poles of American sentiment were rushing to a warm embrace. It was the transparent medium through which sections were learning to see each other clearer and to love each other better. He was melting bitterness in the warmth of his patriotic fervor, sections were being linked in the logic of his liquid sentences and when he died he was literally loving a nation into peace.

Fit and dramatic climax to a glorious mission that he should have lived to carry the South's last message to the center of the nation's culture and then with the gracious answer to his transcendent service locked in his loyal heart, come back to die among the people he had served! Fitter still that as he walked in final triumph through the streets of his beloved city he should have caught upon his kingly brow that wreath of Southern roses

richer jewels than Victoria wears-plucked by the hands of Georgia women, borne by the hands of Georgia men and flung about him with a tenderness which crowned him for his burial-that in the unspeakable fragrance of Georgia's full and sweet approval he might "wrap the drapery of his couch about him and lie down to pleasant dreams!"

If I should seek to touch the core of all his greatness, I would lay my hand upon his heart. I would speak of his humanity-his almost inspired sympathies, his sweet philanthrophy and the noble heartfulness that ran like a silver current through his life. His heart was the

furnace where he fashioned all his glowing speech. Love was the current that sent his golden sentences pulsing through the world, and in the honest throb of human sympathies he found the anchor that held him steadfast to all things great and true. He was the incarnate triumph of a heartful man.

I thank God, as I stand above my buried friend, that there is not one ignoble memory in all the shining pathway of his fame! In all the glorious gifts that God Almighty gave him, not one was ever bent to willing service in unworthy cause. He lived to make the world about him better. With all his splendid might he helped to build a happier, heartier and more wholesome sentiment among his kind. And in fondness, mixed with reverence, I believe that the Christ of Calvary, who died for men, has found a welcome sweet for one who fleshed within his person the golden spirit of the New Commandment and spent his powers in glorious living for his

race.

O brilliant and incomparable Grady! We lay for a

season thy precious dust beneath the soil that bore and cherished thee, but we fling back against all our brightening skies the thoughtless speech that calls thee dead! God reigns and his purpose lives, and although these brave lips are silent here, the seeds sown in thy incarnate eloquence will sprinkle patriots through the years to come, and perpetuate thy living in a race of nobler men!

But all our words are empty, and they mock the air. If we would speak the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within this city that he loved, a monument tall as his services, and noble as the place he filled. Let every Georgian lend a hand, and as it rises to confront in majesty his darkened home, let the widow who weeps there be told that every stone that makes it has been sawn from the solid prosperity which he builded and the light which plays upon the summit is, in afterglow, the sunshine which he brought into the world.

And for the rest-silence. The sweetest thing about his funeral was that no sound broke the stillness, save the reading of the Scriptures and the melody of music. No fire that can be kindled upon the altar of speech can relume the radiant spark that perished yesterday. No blaze born in all our eulogy can burn beside the sunlight of his useful life.

After all there is nothing grander than such living. I have seen the light that gleamed at midnight from the headlight of some giant engine rushing onward through the darkness, heedless of opposition, fearless of danger; and I thought it was grand. I have seen the light come over the Eastern hills in glory, driving the lazy darkness like mist before a sea-born gale, till leaf and tree and blade of grass sparkled in the myriad diamonds of

the morning ray; and I thought it was grand. I have seen the light that leaped at midnight across the stormswept sky, shivering over chaotic clouds, mid howling winds, till cloud and darkness and the shadow-haunted earth flashed into mid-day splendor, and I knew it was grand. But the grandest thing, next to the radiance that flows from the Almighty throne is the light of a noble and beautiful life wrapping itself in benediction around the destinies of men and finding its home in the blessed bosom of the everlasting God.-John Temple

Graves.

[This is the full text of the brilliant eulogy delivered at the Grady memorial exercises in Atlanta on December 28, 1889.]

GRADY.

O Death, there is thy sting; O Grave, there is thy victory. Though our ranks are full of gifted and famous men, in all the tribes of our Israel, there is no Elisha upon whom the mantle of this translated Elijah can descend.

My fellow Georgians, how shall I speak to you of him? It is meet that sympathy should veil her weeping eyes, when she mourns the darling child who bore her gentle image ever mirrored in his life. As well may the tongue speak when the soul has departed, as Southern oratory declaim when Southern eloquence is buried in the grave of Grady. Even American patriotism is voiceless as she stands beside the coffined chieftain of her fast-assembling host. Was he good? Let his neighbors answer. To-night Atlanta is shrouded in as deep a pall

In

as that which wrapped Egypt in gloom when the angel of the Lord smote the first-born in every house. the busiest city of the State the rattle of commerce today was suspended, the hum of industry was hushed, and in that gay capital bright pleasure hath stayed her shining feet to drop a tear upon the grave of him the people loved so well. Was he great? From the pinnacle of no official station has he fallen; the pomp and circumstance of war did not place him upon a pedestal of prominence; no book has he given to the literature of the nation; no wealth has he amassed with which to crystalize his generosity into fame; and yet to-night a continent stands weeping by his new-made grave, and as the waves come laden with the message of the Infinite to the base of the now twice historic Plymouth Rock, the sympathetic sobbing of the sea can only whisper to the stricken land, "Peace, be still; my everlasting arms are round you."

Grady's greatness can not be measured by his speeches, though they were so masterful that they form a portion of his country's history. It will rather be

gauged by that patient, brilliant daily work, which made it possible for him to command the nation's ear; that power of which these public utterances were but the exponents: his daily toil in his private sanctum in the stately building of that magnificent manufactory of public thought, which he wielded as a weaver does his shuttle. A small and scantily furnished room, with nothing in it save Grady, his genius and his God,—and yet thus illumined, it warmed with the light of fraternal love both sections of a republic, compared to which that of historic Greece was but as a perfumed lamp to the