A number of tests show it not to be the `hectic' so well known in consumption;
and to this day it has baffled all the skill I could find in New York,
in Philadelphia, and here. I have myself been disposed to think it arose
purely from the bitterness of having to spend my time in making
academic lectures and boy's books -- pot-boilers all --
when a thousand songs are singing in my heart that will certainly kill me
if I do not utter them soon. But I don't think this diagnosis has found favor
with any practical physician; and meantime I work day after day
in such suffering as is piteous to see."* With his fever at 104 degrees
he wrote "Sunrise", which, though considered by many his best poem,
shows an unmistakable weakness when compared with the "Marshes of Glynn".
There is a letting down of the robust imagination. He delivered his lectures
on the English Novel under circumstances too harrowing to describe.
His audience did not know whether he could finish any one of them.
--
* `Letters', p. 244.
--
And yet the story of his life shall not close with a pathetic account
of those last sad months. Even during the last year he maintained
his cheerfulness, his playfulness, his good humor, and also his buoyancy.
In August, a fourth son, Robert Sampson Lanier, was born at West Chester,
and the father writes letters to his friends, announcing his joy thereat.
One is to his old friend, Richard Malcolm Johnston.
West Chester, Pa.
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