a vol. of essays.
I'm (or rather have been) busy, too, on a long poem, yclept the `Jacquerie',
on which I had bestowed more REAL WORK than on any of the frothy things
which I have hitherto sent out; tho' this is now necessarily suspended
until the summer shall give me a little rest from the office business
with which I have to support myself while I am studying law."*
--
* `Lippincott's Magazine', March, 1905.
--
Lanier's work as a lawyer was that of the office, as he never practiced
in the courts. To the accuracy and fidelity of this work
the words of his successor, Chancellor Walter B. Hill
of the University of Georgia, bear testimony: --
"About 1874 or 1875 I became associated as partner with
the firm of Lanier and Anderson, in whose office Sidney Lanier practiced law
up to the time he left Macon [1869-1873] -- I do not know
whether he was a partner in the firm or whether he merely used
the same office. At any rate, it seems that the greater part of his work
consisted in the examination of titles. The firm of Lanier and Anderson
represented several building and loan associations and had a large business
in this line of work. To examine a title, as you know, requires a visit
to what Oliver Wendell Holmes calls `that cemetery of dead transactions',
the place for the official registry of deeds and other muniments of title,
called in Georgia the office of the Clerk of the Superior Court.
One cannot imagine work that is more dry-as-dust in its character
than going over these records for the purpose of tracing the successive links
in a chain of title.
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