Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

---

[218] After this campaign he was transferred with his brother to the signal service, because, as envious companions said, he could play the flute. In 1863 his detachment was mounted; and later each of the two brothers was detailed to take charge of a vessel which was to run the blockade. Sidney was captured and spent five months as a prisoner at Point Lookout. It was almost at the end of the war (Feb., 1865) that he was exchanged, and he returned home on foot, having only his flute and a twenty-dollar gold piece which had not been taken from him when his pockets were searched, on his capture. He reached home March 15, and was dangerously ill for six weeks, during which his mother died of the pulmonary disease which he had possibly inherited.

In 1873 he took up his abode in Baltimore, having made an engagement as first flute for the Peabody Symphony concerts. Here he resided for the rest of his life, engaged always in a threefold struggle for health, for bread, and for a literary career. To his father, who kept open for him a place in the law office at Macon, he wrote (Nov. 29, 1873) that, first, his chance for life was ten