EULOGY 
ON 
THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 
OF 
'gftfts 
BY 
JOHN A. OCTERLONY, A. M., M. D., 
PROF. OF OBSTETRICS AND DISEASES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN, UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE. 
u ¥ita Bnim SHotitaoqura $emoi|ia 3?o$ita." 
LOUISVILLE, KY. 
PRINTED BY JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY. 
1885 EULOGY 
ON 
THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 
OF 
AAmsforb 
BY 
JOHN A. OCTERLONY, A. M., M. D., 
PROF. OF OBSTETRICS AND DISEASES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN, UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE. 
“ Yita Tnim i$emot;ia Yivotmm $osita.” 
LOUISVILLE, ICY. 
PRINTED BY JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY. 
1885 EULOGY ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 
OF 
Lunsford Pitts Yandell. 
“VITA ENIM MORTUORUM MEMORIA VIVORUM POSITA.” 
Lunsford Pitts Yandell was born on the 6th day of June, 1837, 
on his father’s plantation, “ Craggy Bluff,” in Rutherford County, 
Tennessee. 
He came of a family for generations distinguished in the annals 
of American medicine. His father was the late Prof. L. P. Yandell, 
celebrated for great learning and eloquence, and not only a skillful 
physician, but also a renowned chemist and geologist. His mother 
was Susan Juliet, daughter of David Wendel, Esq., of Murfreesboro, 
Tenn. In her were combined all nature’s choicest gifts. With un- 
common beauty of form and features were united rare intellectual 
endowments; graceful and gracious, of refined manners and sprightly 
conversation, yet profoundly reverent and devout, she won the love 
of all who knew her. 
To her son she must have been the ideal of womanly perfection. 
He loved her with more than ordinary filial affection, and during her 
last illness his unwearied tenderness and ceaseless, gentle cares sweet- 
ened her failing life, and commanded the reverent admiration of all 
who witnessed these touching scenes. 
The son of such parents could not fail to be a gifted being. This 
was proved at every step of his career. The family having moved 
to Louisville, young Lunsford became the pupil of the late Prof. 
Noble Butler, who was one of the most noted educators of his time. 4 
Eulogy on the Life and Character of 
From him he received the training suited to his years, but we may 
readily conceive that his illustrious and learned father had the chief 
share in molding his tastes and developing his intellectual powers. 
Their companionship was close and constant, and their relations 
through life continued most beautiful. What lessons of mind and 
heart were imparted in those happy hours of unrestrained intercourse 
between them! How the father must have poured forth in rich 
abundance the vast treasures of his learning! How the son must 
have received with rapt attention and pondered in his heart the wise 
parental teachings! 
The love of natural history for which Lunsford became conspic- 
uous in after life was early discerned by his father and sedulously 
fostered by him. While yet a boy he displayed unusual fondness 
and aptitude for the study of medicine. His father was one of the 
founders of the University of Louisville, in which at this time and 
for many years he held a leading professorship. Profs. Austin Flint 
and S. D. Gross were also members of the Faculty. It was in this 
great school that young Lunsford became a student. Under the 
tuition of such men his medical education necessarily became both 
comprehensive and thorough. He pursued his clinical studies 
under the guidance of his elder brother, Prof. D. W. Yandell, in 
the wards of the Louisville City Hospital, and in Stokes’s Dispen- 
sary, then under the direction of this eminent surgeon. With such 
ardor and success were these studies prosecuted that the “ Doctorate 
in Medicine” was conferred upon him in 1857, when he was hardly 
twenty years of age. 
Shortly after his graduation the young physician removed to Mem- 
phis, Tenn. Here he soon established a lucrative practice, and rose 
so rapidly in professional esteem that he was elected, in 1859, to the 
Professorship of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the Memphis 
Medical College. This place he filled with great honor to himself 
and increasing advantage to the school. 
But soon the civil war broke out and interrupted his scientific 
labors. One so keenly alive to all that was going on around him, 
the “quicquid agunt homines,” could not help taking a deep interest in 
the great questions which then agitated the country and roused the Lunsford Pitts Yandell. 
5 
passions of the people. With all the enthusiasm of youth and of an 
ardent temperament he plunged into the war, and enlisted as a 
private soldier in the Confederate army, and, with all the loyalty 
of a noble nature, he adhered to the Southern cause. He fought 
in the first battle of the Southwest, at “Belmont.” Gen. Polk, who 
commanded the Confederate forces, having been informed that Dr. 
Yandell was serving as a private in the ranks, called him to his 
headquarters. When the young soldier came he said: “Yandell, 
we need men to carry muskets, but we need surgeons too; and one 
of your name naturally belongs to the medical department of the 
service. Please, therefore, report to the Medical Director of the 
army, who will assign you to duty in his department.” He passed 
the required examination and was commissioned a surgeon. Later 
on he was under the terrific fire at Island No. io, and was one of 
the few who were fortunate enough to escape from the island and 
reach the Confederate lines. He took part in the sanguinary battle 
of Shiloh, and was complimented in general orders for gallantry on 
the field. It was here he came under the immediate notice of Gen. 
Hardee, at whose request he was assigned to duty as staff-surgeon 
and medical inspector of the corps. These posts he filled with 
signal distinction until the final surrender in 1865. He participated 
in nearly all the hard-fought battles of the Southwest, and after each re- 
ceived honorable mention in general orders, not only for his admirable 
care of the sick and wounded, but for gallantry on the field of battle. 
His amiable and cheerful disposition, his ability and faithfulness 
in the discharge of duty, his kindness and sympathy for the sick and 
wounded, won for him both respect and affection. He was the life 
and soul of the mess and around the blazing camp-fire. On the eve of 
battle, on the dreary march, or amid the horrors of defeat, his genial 
presence infused new cheer and mitigated the hardships of war. Of 
all the Confederate soldiers who served with him none was known 
ever to speak of him but with kindness and respect. 
At the close of the war he returned to Louisville and engaged in 
the practice of his profession. Old friends and acquaintances gladly 
welcomed him, and he quickly made new friends. My first recollec- 
tion of Lunsford Yandell dates from this time, and is most vivid and 6 
Eulogy on the Life and Character of 
pleasing. The occasion was a fancy dress ball at the residence of 
Mr. Charles Cobb, of this city. Lunsford personated a knight of the 
sixteenth century. His costume of black and gold was most becom- 
ing, and admirably served to set off his splendid figure. He appeared 
to me to be the handsomest man I had ever seen—perfectly uncon- 
scious of his great attractions, and happy in the possession of youth 
and health and the good will of all around him. 
His practice rapidly increased, and before long his clientele, consisted 
not only of the best people in the city, but of important cases sent 
him from remote parts. Professional journeys to distant places 
became frequent. But few hours were left for recreation and rest, 
yet he had always time to give to the poor. How ceaseless were his 
ministrations to them was not known save by a few, but from his con- 
fidential letters we glean words and incidents which reveal in part 
his generous expenditure of time and labor, where no remuneration 
could be expected and none was ever asked. 
In the latter part of 1866 he married Miss Louisa Elliston, of 
Nashville, Tenn. It was a most happy union. When he brought 
into his home his lovely bride, he also brought in her his good 
genius— 
“A guardian angel, o’er his life presiding, 
Doubling his pleasures and his cares dividing.” 
Four charming children were born to them, the youngest of which 
is a son, who bears his father’s name and beautifully resembles him in 
features. Shortly after his marriage he sailed for Europe, accom- 
panied by his wife. They remained abroad for a year. During this 
time he visited the great centers of medical learning in the Old 
World, and made the personal acquaintance of all the leading men in 
the profession. Wherever he went he made a most favorable impres- 
sion and received unusual attention and courtesy. 
His studies were pursued in earnestness, but in his own original 
way. No blind worshiper of authorities, he observed men and their 
teachings with rare discrimination. While gathering information 
from innumerable sources, he never lost his intellectual indepen- 
dence or merged his own individuality into that of the great masters, 
whom he carefully studied yet as freely criticised. Lunsford Pitts Yandell. 
7 
On returning to Louisville in 1867 he was elected Professor of 
Materia Medica and Therapeutics and Clinical Medicine in the Uni- 
versity of Louisville. This was the beginning of his real life-work, 
and the best part of his scientific work was inspired and effected by 
his connection with this great institution. Lunsford Yandell took 
great pleasure in teaching, not only because he loved the work for its 
own sake, and was admirably fitted for it by nature and training, but 
also because of his great desire to be useful in the highest and widest 
sense. The University was to him an object of intense and passion- 
ate devotion. His illustrious father was one of the founders of her 
medical department. His elder brother had graduated there, and, 
by his great powers as a teacher and wide-spread fame as a bold and 
skillful surgeon, he had still more closely connected the name of 
Yandell with her greatness and her glory. 
Lunsford himself had studied within her walls. She was his 
“alma mater” and now he became one of the Faculty of this Uni- 
versity. With characteristic energy he strove; ceaseless were his 
labors; the ardor of his devotion never cooled. Where the interests 
of the University were in question he knew neither friend nor foe, 
and thought but of her good. 
To the great work of educating young men for the medical pro- 
fession he brought many splendid qualifications rarely combined in 
one person. In the lecture-room his noble countenance was ever “ a 
pleasing sight and a delectable presence.” His commanding figure 
and dignified deportment inspired interest and respect even before he 
had begun to speak, and his rich and melodious voice enthralled atten- 
tion. His language was simple and his style was forcible and clear. 
He had great powers of generalization, and positive and profound 
convictions; yet he was thoroughly progressive, and with the great 
John Hunter he could say, “These are my opinions to-day; I know 
not what they will be to-morrow.” 
Year after year the following passage was copied in his day-book, 
that his eyes might often fall upon it: 
“I am not at all embarrassed because the opinions I held at one 
time are opposed to those which I hold at another. I am not incapa- 
ble of being mistaken.” 8 
Eulogy on the Life and Character of 
In the class-room he always preferred demonstration to mere de- 
scription, and original observation and deduction rather than repeti- 
tions of other men’s opinions. His lectures were 
“ With wisdom fraught; 
Not such as books, but such as practice taught.” 
The influence he exerted upon the students was always for good. 
Nothing unclean ever soiled his lips, whether in conversation with 
them, in clinic or in didactic lecture. In all his teaching there was an 
undertone of deep religious feeling and great reverence for woman, 
which imparted a dignity and impressiveness entirely distinct from 
the eloquence of his style, the music of his voice or the nobleness of 
his presence. 
A taste and talent for literary labors was to be expected in the 
sons of the elder Yandell, who wielded so pointed and so vigorous a 
pen. For half a century he exerted an influence in medical litera- 
ture so wide and deep that its effects have even yet not passed away. 
Young Lunsford at an early period of his career became a contribu- 
tor to various medical journals. His correspondence from Europe 
on medical men and matters was read with avidity, and elicited 
unusual comment and admiration. They deserve a place by the side 
of those masterly medical letters of Prof. David W. Yandell which 
won such great applause at the time of their appearance. 
In 1877 Lunsford Yandell became the co-editor of the Louisville 
Medical News with the lamented Cowling, and continued this ardu- 
ous work until compelled by ill health to retire. But with regained 
health came also a return of energy and a desire for more extended 
usefulness. Again he took editorial charge of the Medical News, 
and continued to be its chief editor during the remainder of his life. 
Few persons realize what a Sisyphus rock a weekly medical jour- 
nal is to its editor. No sooner has he completed one number ere the 
next must be prepared—there is no rest. Yet, worn with professional 
duties and the ceaseless exactions of an onerous practice, Lunsford 
Yandell ever returned to his editorial work with fresh zeal and un- 
abated vigor. The Louisville Medical News is a monument to his 
tireless energy and literary powers. The publications which gave him Lunsford Pitts Yandeil. 
9 
widest reputation, and in which his peculiar merits as a writer most 
conspicuously appear, are his clinical lectures on dermatology. A 
simple style, clearness and conciseness of description, great grasp, 
and a keen appreciation of essentials, made these lectures deservedly 
popular, and impressed the profession with the learning and practical 
skill of their author. 
But it was especially as an epistolary writer that he excelled. 
Here he displayed genius. It has been said that letter-writing is a 
“gift,” and also that it is now one of the lost arts. Lunsford Yan- 
dell’s pen gave brilliant evidence that it remained a living art in the 
year of grace, 1884, no less than in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, when Madame de Sevigne and Lord Chesterfield wrote and 
charmed their readers with their celebrated letters. Lunsford Yan- 
dell’s correspondence was copious and varied, but every where one 
is enchanted by an unstudied grace and an unrestrained naturalness 
in thought and expression; an artless eloquence and simple pathos 
command the reader’s admiration while they invoke reflection. His 
letters evince a wonderful power of adaptation. To a friend he 
writes in the mild light of calm philosophy; his children are ad- 
dressed in a style so inimitable that Hans Christian Andersen could 
not have excelled it. Others again so sweet, so pure, so sacred, they 
may not even be named. In all he writes as a sincere lover of God 
and of his fellow men. Their beauty and their pathos make the 
elegant and petty gossip of De Sevigne and the polish and diplomacy 
of Chesterfield seem very trivial and cold and artificial. 
The elder Yandell, himself one of the most distinguished nat- 
uralists of his day in this country, inculcated a love of natural his- 
tory in all his children. Lunsford became very proficient in geology. 
He enriched and completed the magnificent cabinet his father had 
collected, and displayed wonderful skill in restoring imperfect fossil 
formations, so that in many a specimen it was not easy to decide 
which was the work of art and which of nature. He remained all his life 
an ardent lover of nature in all her moods and aspects; in her small 
and hidden ways as well as in her grander and more striking revela- 
tions. His letters, lectures, and conversation teemed with apt and 
beautiful illustrations drawn from his rich stores of natural science. 10 
Eulogy on the Life and Character of 
Indeed, I can not help the thought that but for his warm and deep 
sympathy for his kind, and never-flagging desire to relieve suffering 
wherever found, he would have become a naturalist instead of a phy- 
sician. It adds new beauty to his life to know that throughout his 
course he sacrificed his own preference in order to serve the better 
his fellow men. 
As a physician he was learned and skillful, conscientious, faithful, 
painstaking and sympathetic. With great respect for himself and for 
his office, he inspired his patients with the same feelings. He had 
confidence in himself and in his powers, and great faith in the power 
of the healing art. To him medicine was not so much a profession 
(and still less a trade) as it was a priesthood, and the practice of it a 
sacred function—the physician a priest—the altar humanity—the sac- 
rifice himself. He was most reluctant to decline any call to visit the 
sick, no matter how inconvenient to himself, especially if the patient 
happened to be poor. In the summer of 1883, while far from strong 
himself, he wrote: “And now I must finish this letter, for I have to 
go a long way to see a sick child; no pay, but I may do it much 
good, and thereby give its parents much happiness.” Such acts as 
this made luminous his days and blessed his sleep with dreams of 
paradise. 
One of the articles of his medical creed was that a physician 
should always first ascertain the mode of action and effects of medi- 
cines by experiment upon himself before prescribing them to his pa- 
tients. He practiced what-he preached, and it is safe to say that he 
had tested upon his own person the powers of all the important drugs 
he made use of in his practice. Medicine was to him emphatically 
“ the healing art.” The great aim before him was to cure, to relieve. 
Other branches of medical science had less charms for him, who e’er 
“ Intent on somewhat that may ease 
Unhealthy mortals, and with curious search 
Examines all the properties of herbs.” 
In science we have a part of an eternal writing unrolled, the rest 
is unrevealed. We can not read the context. We see a part of the 
great chart or map of truth, in which we can follow only certain Lunsford Pitts Yandell. 
11 
tracks or paths. A section of a diagram is before us, the comple- 
ment of which we do not know. But his broad generalizations 
enabled Lunsford Yandell to occupy higher ground and to take 
larger views and penetrate more deeply than is possible to those who 
merely crawl among the mists and mazes of bewildering and con- 
flicting details. 
He was a loyal champion of the great principles in which he 
believed. With dauntless courage he defended them against all 
assaults, no matter in what shape or from what quarter they might 
come. Fidelity to what one believes to be true, moral courage in 
adhering to one’s convictions before the world, is the greatest lack of 
our time. The age lacks sincerity, and what men most lack is the 
feeling that they should be true to the right; and that to be manly is 
to be ready to follow the truth, under whatever guise it may come, to 
whatever it may lead. It was just the possession of this rare quality 
that made Lunsford Yandell so conspicuous, and caused men to 
admire even while they opposed him. 
He was a man of varied powers and of a many-sided character. 
Like a perfect gem, emitting light in all prismatic colors, and from a 
hundred brilliant facets his rich and complex nature presented a new 
yet ever beautiful aspect from whatever side it might be viewed. 
Thoroughly original in thought and independent in action, he could 
not be a man of routine, and never did the same thing twice in 
exactly the same way. 
In the midst of absorbing duties, of steady hard work, the current 
of his life flowed swiftly on. But his usefulness received many a 
check. Attacks of illness time and again interrupted his labors, but 
he returned to them with unwavering determination and in a spirit of 
hope and cheer and trust. Shortly after his forty-sixth birthday he 
wrote : 
“I have grown much older in the last four years, at the rate of 
about four years to the twelve months. As I take stock of life at 
forty-six, I rather believe I can see some progress during the past 
year. My health, on the whole, enables me to work better than for- 
merly, and I have done some writing and studying and lecturing. 
Honest work is never lost, and I have idled little in any way.” 12 
Eulogy on the Life and Character of 
The various attacks of illness that came upon him were as the 
distant but ominous sounds which often precede an earthquake. All 
of a sudden it came. The glorious edifice of his life crumbled into 
instant ruin, and only the blessed memories of what he had been 
remained. On awakening in the morning of the 12th of March, 
1884, he complained of a violent indisposition, and suffered much all 
day. Toward night he appeared more at ease and asked for food. 
A few minutes later he was seized with a sudden angina, and then — 
the silence and sleep of death settled upon him. 
“ There was no cold gradation of decay ; 
Death broke at once the vital chain 
And freed his soul the nearest way.” 
“ Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, 
A shadow on those features fair and thin, 
And softly from the hushed and darkened room 
Two angels issued, where but one went in.” 
He was gone!—His calm and silvery voice will be heard no 
more. Never again will be seen on earth this perfect type of manly 
beauty—noble in aspect, pure in heart, kind and affable in conversa- 
tion, faithful in friendship, vigorous and persevering in all good 
works! 
The news of his death spread with lightning speed, and created 
a profound and sorrowful impression—a whole people mourned; all 
classes united in one common grief. Hearts aching with sorrow 
throbbed in many a lordly mansion. Among the poor a wail of 
anguish went up, for they had lost their friend. Even in the purlieus 
of vice, in dens of sin and shame, eyes unused to tears wept, for the 
good physician was gone. He who had only words of kindness for 
them in their misery and degradation, whose voice was ever soft and 
gentle, whose mild and noble features ever expressed the divine 
sympathy that directed his ministrations even to the most abandoned 
of mankind. His deeds of mercy strewn along his path and shining 
as stars in the firmament do follow him. 
At the grave the poor, the friendless, the fatherless, the widow 
wept in sorrow for their loss, and with voices broken with sobs in- 
voked God’s blessing on the dear ones he had left. Lunsford Pitts Yandell. 
13 
The medical profession of the city and of the whole State was 
profoundly moved with grief at his death. Their public and private 
expressions of sorrow and sympathy were re-echoed from every part 
of this vast continent; and messages of affection and regret came 
even from distant hemispheres across the sea. 
Thus died Lunsford Yandell in his forty-seventh year. It was a 
short life measured by years, but of unusual compass when one 
reflects on all that he accomplished. He crowded within its brief 
space more noble thoughts, more earnest endeavor, more varied 
labors, more stirring activity, more brilliant achievements than go 
to make the sum of fifty ordinary lives. 
I have sketched his public course. Will you pause a little while 
I draw the vail that shrouds his inner life as I have learned to 
know it? 
Gifted with extraordinary abilities, and amid opportunities well 
fitted to stimulate ambition, yet he was signally free from the sway of 
this passion. During the last year of his life he gave much of his 
leisure to the reading of Carlyle, in one of whose letters the following 
passage occurs, which seems to have made a deep impression on 
Lunsford and coincided with his own feelings, for he marked it and 
surrounded it with lines as if he wished to have his eye directed to 
it whenever looking at the page: 
“As to fame, and all that, I see it already to be nothing better 
than a will-o’-the-wisp which leads one on through quagmires and 
pitfalls to catch an object which, when we have caught it, turns out to 
be nothing.” 
In a letter of his own, he writes: 
“ I do not care to have my name live, save for my children’s sake, 
but I wish to sow the seeds of good in this life, which may fructify 
both this and coming generations; which may bring forth good fruit 
that shall feed men and form them for God’s work.” 
He was endowed with extraordinary energy and perseverance 
in the pursuit of any objects he thought worthy and wise; never dis- 
mayed by difficulties, never deterred by obstacles. To. him diffi- 
culties were things simply to be overcome; obstacles merely things 
to be removed. He never failed in any thing he undertook. Men Eulogy on the Life and. Character of 
marveled at his success, but few understood the secret by which he 
succeeded. 
“ What was my art?” said Richelieu. “Genius, some say; some 
fortune; witchcraft some. Not so; my art was justice/” Lunsford 
Yandell loved justice, and feared naught so much as to be unjust to 
any one. After having achieved a great success he wrote to the 
trusted sharer of his joys and sorrows: 
“ But, after all, our great strength consisted in taking the just, 
which is always the strong because it is the right side.” 
To say that he was free from envy would be but scant justice, for 
he was remarkably free from this low but common fault and possessed 
in an unusual degree the opposite virtue. Magnanimity was a distin- 
guishing feature of his character. In the controversies which official 
position or a sense of duty compelled him to engage in, he was the 
sturdy champion of principles, and waged relentless war in behalf of 
them. But he harbored no ill-will toward his opponents. No one 
ever forgave personal injuries more quickly and completely than he 
did. Some time after a certain personal disagreement he was heard 
to ask of a friend: “ Did I not have a quarrel once with Dr. ? 
What was it all about? Do you remember?” So completely had he 
forgiven. With him the remedy for injuries was to forget them. 
“Some grave their wrongs in stone; but he, magnanimous and 
serene, wrote his wrongs in dust; he trod them under foot, blotted 
them out, and grieved only that they could not escape the eye of the 
Almighty.” 
He was lenient toward the weaknesses of men, found extenuating 
circumstances for their faults, and always tried to think the best of 
all. He was a man of deep and tender sympathies, and as he ad- 
vanced in life—as the depth of its meaning became more and more 
clear to him, as he came to feel the gentle pressure and guidance of 
an “ Unseen Hand ”—his sympathy for the suffering and sorrowing, 
the weary and heavy laden, became also more broad and tender, untii 
it enfolded in a sweet embrace all God’s creatures. 
Whatever of human weakness and imperfection might attach to 
him, he certainly made no effort to appear other than he was. No 
one had less hypocrisy in his composition; no one could be more Lunsford Pitts Yandell. 
15 
genuine. Though with charming candor he avowed his faults, yet 
with the delicacy of a sensitive nature he shrank from revealing those 
priceless treasures of mind and heart of which he was possessed, and 
which, when once discerned, inspired love and admiration. Could I 
but interpret to the world one half of the noble thoughts and lofty 
sentiments which lie buried in his grave, I should bestow a greater 
benefit upon the world than I can ever hope to accomplish. 
No one ever set a higher value on true friendship; no one had 
more friends than he; no one loved his friends more than he; no one 
was ever more loved by his friends than he: 
“ His sweetness won a more regard unto his place 
Than all the boist’rous moods 
That ignorant greatness practiceth.” 
It was his delight to gather his friends around him in his beautiful 
home. He was a charming host, and never appeared to greater ad- 
vantage than on those bright occasions when, in the midst of his 
chosen guests, he dispensed a refined and genial hospitality. 
His highest happiness was centered in his home. A loving and 
devoted husband, “ his wife was the ocean to the rivers of his 
thoughts.” 
The paternal instinct was never more strongly displayed in any 
man—it had developed into a principle of his being—an ever-pres- 
ent motive, moulding his utterances, guiding his actions toward the 
one end—the welfare and happiness of his children. 
His was a cheerful and a happy life. Among friends and pupils, 
in his home and abroad, by precept and example, he taught the duty 
of cheerfulness. 
“Cultivate a habit of cheerfulness,” he would say; and again, 
“A wide-spreading, hopeful disposition is your only true umbrella in 
this vale of tears.” In one of his letters he wrote: “Learn to be 
happy; happiness is chiefly self-contained.” 
No one better knew than he the depressing effect of sickness, and 
how easily an over-worked brain engenders fretfulness and irritability. 
“ Bad health ” (he said with Carlyle) “ does indeed undermine me 
more than all other calamities put together.” Yet, while pressed by 16 
Lunsford Pitts Yandell. 
the exacting duties of his professorship and editorial position, worn 
by an arduous practice and by bodily pain, he was ever cheerful, and 
could feel and write : 
“ It would be very wicked and ungrateful in me ever to be sad 
a single moment, for God is so good to me.” 
It was this faith in the goodness of God which built for him a 
bridge across the gulf of death and landed his thoughts peacefully 
on the farther side. 
“And now he rests, his greatness and his sweetness 
No more shall seem at strife, 
And death has rounded into calm completeness 
The statue of his life.” 
One by one I have taken up the many threads of his beautiful 
life, and with unskillful., but with loving hands, have tried to weave 
them into one connected whole. You who knew Lunsford Yandell 
and loved him will feel with me how imperfect, how very far beneath his 
merits my work has been. Yet there is but one thing more for me to 
say, one more tribute to offer to his beloved memory—the laurel 
wreath upon his monument, the sum of all he was, and all he did— 
“He added Lustre to Ancestral Glory.”