he entered the Academy, at the recommendation of many of the best men of the Union.

In less than six months' time Edgar grew tired of the monotonous drill and of the strict discipline. He asked Mr. Allan's permission to resign. This was refused.

About a year after the death of his first wife, Mr. Allan wedded a Mrs. Paterson. This must have dispelled the young poet's hopes of being the sole heir to an immense fortune. As Edgar was determined to quit West Point, he misbehaved himself in many minor matters, and was expelled on the 6th of March, 1831.

Mr. Allan was much hurt at the young man's folly in thus throwing away his fine chances; and when he returned home-alas! home, no longer!received him with friendliness, but with no show of great regard.

The high-spirited youth took umbrage at his cool reception, and forever left the roof that had sheltered him for so many years. A satisfactory explanation of the particular act that led to this parting has never been vouchsafed by either Mr. Allan's family or Poe himself.

Poe then went to Baltimore to live with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm; and gained what little he could by writing for the Baltimore Museum, in which magazine many of his finest prose stories made their appearance.

In 1832 he is described as slight, but handsomely formed, with a loving disposition, and greatly at tached to his aunt and his cousin Virginia, now a very lovely girl of about ten years. He gave a great deal of his time to writing some of the stories which have in these latter days become world-famous; and in 1833 was fortunate enough to gain a prize of one hundred dollars for his story, "Manuscript Found in a Bottle."

It was in the month of September, 1835, that Edgar A. Poe was married to Virginia Clemm, by Dr. Johns, afterward Protestant Bishop of Virginia. On the following day he departed for Richmond. A year passed before his young bride and her mother followed him to that place

In 1835 Poe became a regular contributor to the Southern Literary Messenger, furnishing it with a melange of articles of superior merit. For about four years our young writer continued to make the pages of this periodical brilliant with his productions.

Life at this time was very pleasant to him, and those who met him. He was deeply enamored of his fair cousin Virginia; and did all in his power to educate her. Many of the most effective productions of his muse were inspired by her beauty and worth.

Poe became the editor of the Messenger at the end of the year 1835, and its circulation was largely augmented under his management.

He was offered the position of joint-editor of the New York Quarterly Review; and in 1837 he accepted the offer, and traveled to New York with his wife and her mother. Mrs. Clemm eked out a living at this time by taking a few boarders.

Until the summer of 1838 Poe continued to write with great success in New York. At that time he went to Philadelphia. While living in this city the famous romancist and soldier Mayne Reid visited at his house, and has left us a delightful sketch of the poet's home nest.

"In this humble domicile I have spent some of the pleasantest hours of my life,- certainly some of the most intellectual. They were passed in the company of the poet himself and his wife, a lady angelically beautiful in person, and not less beautiful in spirit. No one who remembers that dark-eyed, dark-haired daughter of the South,-her face so exquisitely lovely,—her gentle, graceful demeanor, no one who has ever spent an hour in her society, but will indorse what I have said of this lady, who was the most delicate realization of the poet's rarest ideal. But the bloom upon her cheek was too pure, too bright for earth. It was consumption's color,that sadly beautiful light that beckons to an early grave."

In Philadelphia Poe was regularly engaged on The Gentleman's Magazine, owned and edited by the late famous comedian, William E. Burton. For this serial he wrote many fine articles. In 1840 we

find him successfully writing for Graham's Magazine, often breaking literary butterflies upon the wheel. Many of his productions were about this time translated into French, and attracted much attention in Paris.

The fall of 1844 saw Poe and his little family once again domiciled in New York, where he became assistant editor of The Evening Mirror, then published by the two poets, Morris and Willis.

In 1845 he became part owner and associate editor of The Broadway Journal. But after a while it failed. Indeed, it was impossible for any human being to manage a paper successfully, and at the same time devote so much of his time to his dearly loved and now dying wife.

About this time his enemies—and he had made many by his superior talents and his excoriating of dunces-told numerous scandalous stories about him. These ridiculous fabrications would have long since died out, were it not that every historian of the poet's life keeps them alive by reprinting them, with the avowed purpose of disproving them.

It was in 1845 that "The Raven" first appeared on "the bust of Pallas," to quit it "Never more." Twenty times as many lines have been written about this famous poem as Poe wrote during the whole of his lifetime.

During the end of 1845 and the early months of 1846, Poe, then living in New York, reached the "high topgallant" of his reputation. His society

was much courted by the leading writers of the day; and many attentions were bestowed upon the poet and his failing wife.

It was in 1846 that the poet went to Fordham, a village near New York, for purer air and quietness. Here, in a very humble little cottage, the poor wife and her loving mother and doting husband lived in very straitened circumstances. It was at this time that his brother poet, N. P. Willis, appealed to the admirers of genius on behalf of the distressed family. In this appeal Mr. Willis said:

"Here is one of the finest scholars, one of the most original men of genius, and one of the most industrious of the literary profession of our country, whose temporary suspension of labor, from bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common objects of public charity. There is no intermediate stopping-place, no respectful shelter, where, with the delicacy due to genius and culture, he might secure aid, till, with returning health, he could resume his labors, and his unmortified sense of independence."

The 30th of January, 1847, saw the death of the unfortunate young wife from that fell disease that appears to select the fairest and the most gifted for its victims. This poor consumptive lady was but twenty-five years of age at the time that she died of chills, while her mother and her husband tried to impart warmth to her by chafing her hands and feet,