are among the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life,
when with a few chosen companions we would read from some treasured volume,
it may have been Tennyson or Carlyle or Christopher North's
`Noctes Ambrosianae', or we would make the hours vocal with music and song;
those happy nights, which were veritable refections of the gods. . . .
On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute
extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear.
At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance,
and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone,
that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony.
Or, in merry mood, I have seen him take a banjo, for he could play
on any instrument, and as with deft fingers he would strike
some strange new note or chord, you would see his eyes brighten,
he would begin to smile and laugh as if his very soul were tickled,
while his hearers would catch the inspiration, and an old-fashioned
`walk-round' and `negro breakdown', in which all would participate,
would be the inevitable result. At other times, with our musical instruments,
we would sally forth into the night and 'neath moon and stars
and under `Bonny Bell window panes' -- ah, those serenades!
were there ever or will there ever be anything like them again? --
when the velvet flute notes of Lanier would fall pleasantly upon the night."

--
* Quoted from Baskervill's `Southern Writers', p. 149.
--

Speaking further of his reading and of the way in which he shared his delight
with others, the same writer says: "I recall how he delighted in
the quaint and curious of our old literature. I remember that it was he
who introduced me to that rare old book, Burton's `Anatomy of Melancholy',