Only just as I left him did he let fall a single remark
that I later saw showed how severe and unfortunate, probably,
was the strain of it all."
Brave as he was, however, and eager to keep at his work,
he finally submitted to the inevitable, and in May started with his brother
to the mountains of western North Carolina. His final interview
with Dr. Gilman is thus related by the latter: --
"The last time that I saw Lanier was in the spring of 1881,
when after a winter of severe illness he came to make arrangements
for his lectures in the next winter and to say good-bye for the summer.
His emaciated form could scarcely walk across the yard
from the carriage to the door. `I am going to Asheville, N.C.,' he said,
`and I am going to write an account of that region as a railroad guide.
It seems as if the good Lord always took care of me.
Just as the doctors had said that I must go to that mountain region,
the publishers gave me a commission to prepare a book.' `Good-bye,' he added,
and I supported his tottering steps to the carriage door,
never to see his face again."*
--
* `South Atlantic Quarterly', April, 1905.
--
The last months of Lanier's career seem to bring together
all the threads of his life. He was in the mountains which had first
stimulated his love of nature and were the background of his early romance.
He was lovingly attended by father, brother, and wife,
and took constant delight in the little boy who had come to cheer
his last days of weariness and sickness.
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