The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-12-02
ELEVEN

ferrcd to Wilmington. the headdpar- ters of the marine signal service. in which he remained until the close of the war.
 Finally he became signal officer of blockade runner Sidneys vessel was prisoner and for five months he was prisoner at Point Lookout. Md, with nothing but his flute to solace him. It was the exposure of prison life doubt less that developed the seeds Of con sumption, disease that he was to struggle with the last 15 years of his life.
 Released from prison in February. Iss5. he returned to Georgia. the most part afoot and reached home March E. Se- riously III for six weeks. he arose from his bed to see his mother carried off by tuberculosis and to find himself suffer ing with congestion of the lungs. Slightly relieved Lanier turned his hand to various projects for making living. clerhng Tn hotel at Montgomery for two years, writing and publishing his novel, Tiger Lilies" in which he gives an account of his war life; teaching at Prattville one year. during which time he married Miss Mary Day of Macon, Ga; studying. and then practicing law with his father at Macon, Ga. for five years; now. in the winter of 1S72-73. try ing to recuperate at San Antonio. Tex, for hemorrhages and begun in 1868, and a cough had set in two years later, and finally settling in Baltimore. December, 1873, to devote himself to music and lit- erature.
 Despite continued i'll health. which now and again necessitate visits of months duration to Florida, North @rolina and Virginia, Lanier did a vast amount of work, playing first flute for the Peabody symphony concerts. po- sition he filled with rare distinction for ns~r t.s class and to the public. lectured on Eng fish literature at the Johns-Hopkins uni versity of Baltimore, besides doing much other literary work.
 Against the sons devotion of his life to music and literature Lanier's father protested chiefly on business grounds, and begged him to rejoin him in the practice Of the law. Thanking his father for his thoughtfulness, Lanier justified his own course fin these ear nest words: My dear father think how through weariness. through sickness, through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical college and of a bare army and then of on exacting business life, through all the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with literary peo- pie and literary ways. I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circum- stances, and a thousand more which I could enumerate, these two figures of II my heart so that I could not banish them. Does it not seem to you, as to me, that I begin to have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts, after having fol- lowed them so long and so humbly and through so much bitterness?"
 Of course, the father yielded and did all that his slender means would allow toward keeping up his son. who henceforth devoted every energy to Iit- erature and music. But finally, toward the summer of 1881, desperate illness made it necessary to seek relief near Asheville, N. C., but growing no bet ter he was moved to Lynn, Polk coun- ty, North Carolina. Of the end, Mrs. Lanier, his wife, wrote: "We are left alone Git is August 29, 1SS1,) with one another. On this last night of the summer comes a change. His love and immortal will hold off the destroyer of our summer yet one more week until the forenoon of September '. and then falls the frost and that un- faltering will renders it's supreme sub- mission to the will of God
 The body was inferred in Green mount cemetery at Baltimore. Some years ago at Chautauqua. N. Y. the "chautauquans" chose Sidney Lanier class poet. Upon this occasion heard Bishop Vincent the founder of the association, read letter written by Thomas Carlyle. the great English es- sayist and man of letters. in which Carlyle said that he considered sid ney Lanier not only the greatest American poet, but the greatest poet the English speaking races have pro- duced." Bishop Vincent also said that Lanier's poems have been translated into many foreign languages, burt that he was less appreciated in the south, the place of his nativity. than else- where But
 The twin souls of music and poesy Shall float OCT the hills of Habcr-
 sham"
 And through the valleys of Hall,' And time in her revolution shall
 twine wreath of fame
 To decorate and adorn thy immortal
 brow and name,
 Unusually checkered, Sidney Ianier's life was, yet for him as for Timrod. poetry and music turned life's taste less waters into wine and flushed them through and through with pur- pie tints" Very truly,
 MRS. P. A. HOLLEY. Birmingham, November 24. 1917.