Literary Hearthstones of Dixie | Page 4

ghostly path through the
forest--the road through life that led to the grave where his heart lay
buried. Through the telescope on that balcony he may first have
followed the wanderings of Al Araaf, the star that shone for him alone.
In the dim paths of the moonlit garden flitted before his eyes the
dreamful forms that were afterward prisoned in the golden net of his
wondrous poesy.
[Illustration: EDGAR ALLAN POE From the daguerreotype formerly
owned by Edmund Clarence Stedman]

To these poetic scenes he soon bade farewell, and on St. Valentine's
day, 1826, entered the University of Virginia, where Number 13, West
Range, is still pointed out as the old-time abiding place of Virginia's
greatest poet, whose genius has given rise to more acrimonious
discussion than has ever gathered about the name of any other
American man of letters. The real home of Poe at this time was the
range of hills known as the Ragged Mountains, for it was among their
peaks and glens and caverns and wooded paths and rippling streams
that he roamed in search of strange tales and mystic poems that would
dazzle his readers in after days. His rambles among the hills of the
University town soon came to a close. Mr. Allan, being confronted by a
gaming debt which he regarded as too large to fit the sporting
necessities of a boy of seventeen, took him from college and put him
into the counting-room of Ellis & Allan, a position far from agreeable
to one accustomed to counting only poetic feet.
The inevitable rupture soon came, and Poe went to Boston, the city of
his physical birth and destined to become the place of his birth into the
tempestuous world of authorship. Forty copies of "Tamerlane and
Other Poems" appeared upon the shelf of the printer--and nowhere else.
It is said that seventy-three years later a single copy was sold for
$2,250. Had this harvest been reaped by the author in those early days,
who can estimate the gain to the field of literature?
Boston proving inhospitable to the firstling of her gifted son's
imagination, the Common soon missed the solitary, melancholy figure
that had for months haunted the old historic walks. Edgar A. Poe
dropped out of the world, or perhaps out of the delusion of fancying
himself in the world, and Edgar A. "Perry" appeared, an enlisted soldier
in the First Artillery at Fort Independence. For two years "Perry"
served his country in the sunlight, and Poe, under night's starry cover,
roamed through skyey aisles in the service of the Muse and explored
"Al Araaf," the abode of those volcanic souls that rush in fatal haste to
an earthly heaven, for which they recklessly exchange the heaven of the
spirit that might have achieved immortality.
A severe illness resulted in the disclosure of the identity of the young

soldier, and a message was sent to Mr. Allan, who effected his
discharge and helped secure for him an appointment to West Point. On
his way to the Academy he stopped in Baltimore and arranged for the
publication of a new volume, to contain "Al Araaf," a revised version
of "Tamerlane," and some short poems.
Some months later No. 28 South Barracks, West Point, was the despair
of the worthy inspector who spent his days and nights in unsuccessful
efforts to keep order among the embryo protectors of his country. Poe,
the leader of the quartette that made life interesting in Number 28, was
destined never to evolve into patriotic completion. He soon reached the
limit of the endurance of the officials, that being, in the absence of a
pliant guardian, the only method by which a cadet could be freed from
the walls of the Academy.
Soon after leaving the military school Poe made a brief visit to
Richmond, the final break with Mr. Allan took place, and the poet went
to Baltimore.
Number 9 Front Street, Baltimore, is claimed as the birthplace of Poe.
There is a house in Norfolk that is likewise so distinguished. There are
other places, misty with passing generations, similarly known to history.
Poe, though not Homeric in his literary methods, had much the same
post-mortem experience as the Father of the Epicists.
At the time of the Poet-wanderer's return to Baltimore his aunt, Mrs.
Clemm, had her humble but neat and comfortable home on Eastern
Avenue, then Wilks Street, and here he found the first home he had
known since his childhood and, incidentally, his charming child cousin,
Virginia, who was to make his home bright with her devotion through
the remainder of her brief life.
In these early days no thought of any but a cousinly affection had
rippled the smooth surface of Virginia's childish mind, and she was the
willing messenger between Poe and his