one which seemed interminable. Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of the room with one end, and her husband to the opposite with the other. And whose lengthened sweetness long drawn out is that?' said I. 'Hear her,' he cried, 'just as if her little vain heart didn't tell her it's herself!""

It was in the summer of 1846 that the poet removed his dying wife to the quietude and repose of the cottage at Fordham, Westchester County, near New York. "Here," exclaims Mrs. Whitman, in her exalted essay on "Edgar Poe and his Critics "--the noblest memorial yet raised to the poet's memory-"here he watched her failing breath in loneliness and privation through many solitary moons, until, on a desolate, dreary day of the ensuing winter, he saw her remains borne from beneath its lowly roof." The fullest and most interesting account of Poe's life at Fordham is to be found in the "Reminiscences" of a brother author. Of his first visit to Fordham to see Poe he

says"We found him and his wife and his wife's mother, who was his aunt, living in a little cottage at the top of a hill. There was an acre or two of greensward, fenced in about the house as smooth as velvet, and as clean as the best kept carpet. There was some grand old cherry-trees in the yard that threw a massive shade around them.

"Poe had somehow caught a full-grown bob-o'-link. He had put him in a cage, which he had hung on a nail driven into the trunk of a cherry-tree. The poor bird was as unfit to live in a cage as his captor was to live in the world. He was as restless as his jailer, and sprang continually in a fierce, frightened way from one side of the cage to the other. I pitied him, but Poe was bent on training him. There he stood with his arms crossed before the tormented bird, his sublime trust in attaining the impossible apparent in his whole self. So handsome, so impassive in his wonderful, intellectual beauty, so proud and reserved, and yet so confidentially communicative, so

entirely a gentleman upon all occasions that I ever saw him; so tasteful, so good a talker was Poe, that he impressed himself and his wishes, even without words, upon those with whom he spoke. . . . Poe's voice was melody itself. He always spoke low, even in a violent discussion, compelling his hearers to listen if they would know his opinion, his facts, fancies, philosophy, or his weird imaginings. These last usually flowed from his pen, seldom from his tongue.

"On this occasion I was introduced to the young wife of the poet, and to the mother, then more than sixty years of age. She was a tall, dignified old lady, with a most lady-like manner, and her black dress, though old and much worn, looked really elegant on her. . . Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion, which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair, gave her an unearthly look. One felt that she was almost a disrobed spirit, and when she coughed it was made certain that she was rapidly passing away. The mother seemed hale and strong, and appeared to be a sort of universal Providence for her strange children.

"The cottage had an air of taste and gentility that must have been lent to it by the presence of its inmates. So neat, so poor, so unfurnished, and yet so charming a dwelling I never saw. . . . The sitting-room was laid with check matting; four chairs, a light stand, and a hanging bookshelf completed its furniture. There were pretty presenta tion copies of books on the little shelves, and the Brownings had posts of honour on the stand. With quiet exultation Poe drew from his side-pocket a letter that he had recently received from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. He read it to us. It was very flattering. She told Poe that

his

poem of The Raven' had awakened a fit of horror in England. . . . . He was at this time greatly depressed. Their extreme poverty, the sickness of his wife, and his

own inability to write, sufficiently accounted for this.. We strolled away into the woods, and had a very cheerful time, till some one proposed a game at leaping. I think it must have been Poe, as he was expert in the exercise. Two or three gentlemen agreed to leap with him, aud though one of them was tall, and had been a hunter in times past, Poe still distanced them all. But, alas! his gaiters, long worn and carefully kept, were both burst in the grand leap that made him victor. I was certain he had no other shoes, boots, or gaiters . .. if any one had money, who had the effrontery to offer it to the poet?"

This same writer, becoming intimate with the poet, made several visits to Fordham. "The autumn came," he

...

resumes, "and Mrs. Poe sank rapidly in consumption, and I saw her in her bedchamber. Everything here was so neat, so purely clean, so scant and poverty stricken. . . . There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a snow-white spread and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's greatcoat, with a large tortoiseshell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands, and her mother her feet. Mrs. Clemm was passionately fond of her daughter, and her distress on account of her illness, and poverty, and misery, was dreadful to see.

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'As soon as I was made aware of these painful facts I came to New York, and enlisted the sympathies and services of a lady whose heart and hand were ever open to the poor and miserable. . . . . . The lady headed a subscription, and carried them sixty dollars the next week. From the day this kind lady first saw the suffering family of the poet, she watched over them as a mother. She saw them often, and ministered to the comfort of the dying and the living.