THE NEW SOUTH

HENRY W. GRADY

A master hand has drawn for you the picture of your returning armies. You have been told how, in the pomp and circumstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war, - an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory, in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that equaled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever welcomed heroes home.

Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as, ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds; having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey.

What does he find let me ask you what does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away, his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone. Without money, credit, employment, material, or training, and, beside all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence, the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.

What does he do, this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who

had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow; and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June.

But what is the sum of our work? We have found out that the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop, and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories, and put business above politics.

The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full statured and equal, among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because, through the inscrutable wisdom of God, her honest purpose was crossed and her brave armies were beaten.

The South has nothing for which to apologize. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hill - a plain white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men — that of a brave and simple man who died in a brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that I shall send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood.

But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in his almighty hand, that

human slavery was swept forever from American soil, and that the American Union was saved from the wreck of war.

Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which, straight from his soldier's heart, Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the vision of a restored and happy people which gathered above the couch of your dying captain, filling his heart with grace, touching his lips with praise, and glorifying his path to the grave — will she make this vision, on which the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in asking for comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does not refuse to accept in frankness and sincerity this message of good will and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, be verified in its fullest sense when he said: "Standing hand to hand and clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of the same country, members of the same government, united, all united now and united forever."

2. Cadence is that part of Melody which marks the close of a clause or sentence when the rhetorical thought is complete. It consists of one or as many as five downward slides or steps, the last of which must be a Falling Inflection. It must reach the line of repose, and satisfy the ear with the sense of completed thought. Cadence is easily detected. Count "twenty' by fives, pausing after five, ten, and fifteen, with lowered Pitch and Rising Inflection on the last syllable, and then end with the utterance of "twenty" with a positive Falling Inflection and the complete sense is fully realized. The distance of this fall of voice is relative, and is dependent upon the gentleness or turbulence of the Current Melody preceding it; the more varied the Current the deeper the plunge of notes in the Cadence.

There are five Cadences: (1) the Monad, in which there is but one syllable; (2) the Duad, in which there are two; (3) the Triad, in which there are three; (4) the Tetrad, in which there

are four; and (5) the Pentad, in which there are five syllables. There are two varieties each of Duads and Triads. The use of the Cadence is determined by the accent and emphasis of the syllables composing the closing words of the sentence, as indicated by the heavier shaded notes in the following cuts:

The Monad is used when the last syllable of the closing word is strongly emphatic, or when the sentence ends in a very emphatic monosyllable.

(2) The Duad.

My answer would be a blow.

a. The First Duad is used when the next to the last syllable of the sentence is accented.

They all fired at ran - dom.

b. The Second Duad is used when the last syllable of the sentence is moderately strong.

Let me not hinder, Cassius, your de - sire.

(3) The Triad.

a. The Rising Triad is used when the last three syllables are about equally emphatic.

Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!

b. The Falling Triad is used when the second from the last syllable of the sentence is accented.

The feast was boun- ti- ful.

(4) The Tetrad is used when the third from the last syllable of the sentence is accented.

The work was done beau - ti - ful - ly.

(5) The Pentad is used when the fourth from the last syllable of the sentence is accented.

He was prompted by pure dis - in - ter - est - ed - ness.

FAULTS OF CADENCE

In practicing Cadence students are cautioned against the following defects:

a. Dropping the voice too suddenly at the close of the sentence,

b. Allowing the voice to rise on the last syllable,

c. Giving the last syllable with a note of song,

d. Turning plain discourse into pathos by using the slide of the semitone on the last note, and

e. Making Cadence where the thought is not complete, as is often the case in reading poetry.

Selection illustrating Cadence.

NOTE. Determine its class and execute each of the Cadences in the following selection. Strive for a positive and satisfactory close to each sentence where a Cadence is required.

A FOOL IN THE FOREST FROM

"AS YOU LIKE IT"

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Jaques. A fool, a fool!- I met a fool i' the forest,

A motley fool; a miserable world!

As I do live by food, I met a fool,