THIS was a fine type of the man of the New South. Very many able young men of the Southern States, discouraged by the desolations of the War, the difficulties besetting life during the Reconstruction period, and the slowness of general recovery, transferred their activities to Northern cities and there prospered. Young GRADY, however, after graduation at the State University of Georgia, his native State, and post-graduate studies at the University of Virginia, went into journalism in Rome, Georgia, and by his intelligent industry there, and his uncommonly reasonable and candid articles in Northern papers upon Southern affairs, gained a strong position. By the help of friends he bought into the Atlanta Constitution, one of the best of the Southern journals, became its editor, and so continued as long as he lived. In this influential position GRADY was often called upon for public addresses, and developed a remarkable oratorical power. His two most significant orations were made at the North, his subjects being the affairs of the South. At the New England Society's annual banquet in New York, December 12, 1886, he made a great impression. "There was a South of slavery and secession," he began; "that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom; that South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour,” and he proceeded to depict it in glowing words that aroused the enthusiastic sympathy of his hearers. The other address was made three years later, before the banquet of the Boston Merchants' Association, December 12, 1889, and such portions of it as are here given show clearly the man of heart, of intellect, and of the orator's power. He died, ten days later, regretted by the whole country. THE NEW SOUTH THE stoutest apostle of the church, they say, is the missionary, and the missionary, wherever he unfurls his flag, will never find himself in deeper need of unction and address than I, bidden to-night to plant the standard of a Southern Democrat in Boston's banquet hall, and to discuss the problem of the races in the home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr. President, if a purpose to speak in perfect frankness and sincerity; if earnest understanding of the vast interests involved; if a consecrating sense of what disaster must follow further misunderstanding and estrangement if all these may be counted on to steady undisciplined speech and to strengthen an untried arm, then, Sir, I shall find the courage to proceed. Happy am I that this mission has brought my feet, at last, to press New England's historic soil, and my eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. Here within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill where Webster thundered and Longfellow sung, Emerson thought, and Channing preached here in the cradle of American letters and almost of American liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that every American owes New England when first he stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange apparition! This stern and unique figure, carved from the ocean and the wilderness, its majesty kindling and growing amid the storms of winter, and of wars, until, at last, the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed in the tranquil sunshine, and the heroic workers rested at its base, while startled kings and emperors gazed and marveled that from the rude touch of this handful, cast on a bleak and unknown shore, should have come the embodied genius of human liberty! God bless the memory of those immortal workers and prosper the fortunes of their living sons and perpetuate the inspiration of their handiwork! . Far to the South, Mr. President, separated by a line once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in fratricidal blood, and now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow-lies the fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and hospitable people. There is centered all that can please or prosper humankind. A perfect climate above a fertile soil yields to the husbandman every product of the temperate zone. There, by night, the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and by day the wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf. In the same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. There are mountains stored with exhaust less treasures; forests vast and primeval, and rivers that, tumbling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the three essential items of all industries cotton, iron, and wood that region has easy control. In cotton, a fixed monopoly; in iron, proven supremacy; in timber, the reserve supply of the republic. From this assured and permanent advantage, against which artificial conditions cannot long prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries. Not maintained by human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar off from the fullest and cheapest source of supply, but resting in Divine assurance, within touch of field and mine and forest — not set amid bleak hills and costly farms from which competition has driven the farmer in despair, but amid cheap and sunny lands, rich with agriculture, to which neither season nor soil has set a limit this system of industries is mounting to a splendor that shall dazzle and illumine the world. That, Sir, is the picture and the promise of my home a land better and fairer than I have told you, and yet but a fit setting, in its material excellence, for the loyal and gentle quality of its citizenship. Against that, Sir, we have New England recruiting the republic from its sturdy loins, shaking from its overcrowded hives new swarms of workers, and touching this land all over with its energy and its courage. And yet while in the Eldorado, of which I have told you, but fifteen per cent of lands are cultivated, its mines scarcely touched, and its population so |