Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1890-02-27


Nation-Grady'sL Labors for 1t.
The great Academy Of Music il
Brooklyn, N. Y. was thronged Mt tn,
preaching service of the Rev. T. d.
Witt Talmage, Sunday, Feb. %. Many
hundreds of persons did not gain ad.
mittsnce. After .an exposition by DR.
Talmage of passages OF Scripture de.
scriptive of the influence of the pen
James Montgomery's hymn was sung:
Who are those in bright array,
This innumerable throng
Round the altar night and day
Tuning one triumphant song?
The subject of DR.. Talmages sermon
was: The Life and Death of Henry
W. Grady, the Editor and Orator." He
took for his text Isaiah viii, /: TAKE
thee great roll, and write in it with a
mans PEN" The preacher said:
To Isaiah, with royal blood in his
veins and q habitant of palaces, does
this divine order come. He is to take a
roll, large roll, and w1ite on it with a
pen, not an angels pen, bata mans pen.
So God honored the pen and SO he hon.
ored manuscript. In our day the mighti-
est roll is the religious and secular
newspaper, and the mightiest pen is the
editors pom, whether for good or evil.
And God says now to every literary man,
and especially to every journalist: Take
thee great roll and write in it with a
mans PEN"
Within few weeks one of the strong
est, most vivid and most brilliant of
those pens was laid down on the edi-
torial desk in Atlanta, never again to be
resumed. was far away at the time.
We had been sailing up from the Medi-
terranean Sea, through the Dardanelles,
which region is unlike anything ever
saw for beauty. There is not any other
water scenery on earth where God has
done SO many picturesque things with
islands. They are somewhat like the
Thousand Islands of our American st.
Lawrence, but more like heaven. In
deed, we had just passed Patmos, the
place from which John had his apo
calyptic vision. Constantinople had
seemed to come out to greet us, for your
approach to that city is different from
any other city. Other cities as you ap-
proach them seem to retire, but this city,
with its glittering minarets and pima
cles, seems almost to step into the water
to greet you. But my landing there,
that would have been to me an exhilara-
tion, was suddenly stunned with the
tidings of the death of my intimate
friend, Henry w. Grady. I could hardly
believe the tidings, for ] had left on my
study table at home letters and tele-
grams from him, those letters and tele-
grams having q warmth and geniality
and wit such as he only could express.
The departure of no public man for
m nv x1aarc hoe n n ffa nfnl Mo IT, l.-,,
walked about as in dream, and re-
solved that, getting home, I would for
the sake of his bereaved household, and
for the sake of his bereaved profession,
and for the sake of what he had been to
me and shall continue to be as long as
memory lasts, would speak a word in
of him, the most promis-
ing of Americans, and learn some of the
salient lessons of his departure.
have no doubt that he had enemies,
for no man can live such an active life
as he lived or be so far in advance of
his time without making enemies, some
because he defeated their projects and
some because he outshone them. Owls
and bats never did like the rising sun.
But shall tell you how he appeared to
me, and am glad that told him while
he was in full health what thought of
him.
Memorial orations and gravestone epi-
taphs are often mean enough, for they
say of a man after he is dead that which
ought to have been said of him while
living. One garland for living brow
is worth more than mountain of jap
onicas and calla lilies heaped on fu-
neral casket. BY little black volume
of fifty pages containing the eulogiums
and poems uttered and written at the
demise of Clay and Webster and Cal /
houn and Lincoln and Sumner, the
world tried to pay for the forty years of |
obloquy it heaped upon those living
giants. If say nothing in praise Of q
man while he lives I will keep silent
when he is dead. Myrtle and weeping
willow can never do what ought to have
been done by amaranth and palm
branch. No amount of Dead March in |
Saul rumbling from big organs at the |
obsequies can atone for nom -apprecia- !
lion of the man before he fell on sleep. |
The hearse cannot do what ought to |
have been done by chariot. But there |
ire important things that need to be |
,aid about our friend. who was
prophet in American journalism and
who onlya few years ago heard the |
command of my text: Take thee great I
roll, and write in it with mans PEN" |
His father dead, Henry W. Grady, q
BOY but IA years of age, took up the bat
lie of life. 1t would require long I
chapter to record the names of orphans
Who have come to the top. When God /
akes away the head of the household
le very often gives to some lad in that
household special qualification. I
Christ remembers how that his own
'ather died early, leaving him to sup
port himself and his mother and his |
,rothers in the carpenters shop at
Nazareth, and he is in sympathy with
Ill boys and all young men in the strug- I
yle. You say: "Ob, if my father had
,nly lived would have had better
education and would have had more
promising start, and there are some
wrinkles ON my brow that would not
iaye been there. But / have noticed
hat God has made special way for or
,hans. You would not be half the man
Tou are if you had not been obliged i
rom your early days to fight
,oys got out Of Yale or Harvard
Knocks. Go among successful mer-
,hants, lawyers, physicians, and men Of
u occupations and professions, and
here are many of them who will tell I
Iou. AT ten, or twelve, or fifteen years
i age Istarted for myself; father was
ick, or father was dead" But somehow
hey got through and got up. account
or II BY the fact that there Is a special
Of God for orphans. All
lail, the fatherless and the motherless!
Nh ord lAr, III