Contemporary testimony to my joy in his companionship is borne
in frequent references thereto in my private correspondence of those days.
`Several students,' says a New Year's letter to a Northern friend,
`room in the hotel, as well as a young and very intellectual tutor,
right back of me, which makes it very pleasant.' In a later letter:
`The tutor is a brick. I am much pleased with him and anticipate
much pleasure in his company.' As to his plans for the future:
`The tutor -- Lanier -- is studying for a professorship;
is going to remain here about two years, then go to Heidelberg, Germany,
remain about two years, come back, and take a professorship somewhere.'
It is needless to add that the destroying angel of war wrecked ruthlessly
all these beautiful ambitions.
"Lanier's passion for music asserted itself at every opportunity.
His flute and guitar furnished recreation for himself
and pleasant entertainment for the friends dropping in upon him.
As a master of the flute he was said to be, even at eighteen,
without an equal in Georgia. `Tutor Lanier,' I find myself recording
at the time, `is the finest flute-player you or I ever saw.
It is perfectly splendid -- his playing. He is far famed for it.
His flute cost fifty dollars, and he runs the notes as easily
as any one on the piano. Description is inadequate.'"*
--
* "Recollections and Letters of Sidney Lanier", by Milton H. Northrup.
`Lippincott's Magazine', March, 1905.
--
Before he was twenty years old, then, the master passions of Lanier's soul
-- scholarship, music, and to a less degree poetry -- had asserted themselves.
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