"Wouldn't it be a curious and refreshing phenomenon if Tweed, Hall,
Bullock,* and that ilk should all continue in the service of the State --
only changing the scene of their labors from the office to the penitentiary?"
--
* Governor of Georgia during reconstruction days.
--
Most of all, however, Lanier was interested in the music which he heard
on these trips to the metropolis. He had kept up his flute-playing
while busy with his law work, frequently playing at charity concerts
in Macon and other cities of Georgia. In New York he reveled
in the singing of Nilsson, in religious music at St. Paul's Church,
but above all in Theodore Thomas's orchestra, then just beginning
its triumphant career. He writes, August 15, 1870:
"Ah, how they have belied Wagner! I heard Theodore Thomas's orchestra
play his overture to `Tannhaeuser'. The `Music of the Future' is surely
thy music and my music. Each harmony was a chorus of pure aspirations.
The sequences flowed along, one after another, as if all the great and noble
deeds of time had formed a procession and marched in review
before one's EARS instead of one's EYES. These `great and noble deeds'
were not deeds of war and statesmanship, but majestic victories
of inner struggles of a man. This unbroken march of beautiful-bodied Triumphs
irresistibly invites the soul of a man to create other processions like it.
I would I might lead a so magnificent file of glories into heaven!"*
--
* `Letters', p.
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