s sweet
wife, had written me a pressing invitation to come to them, and I, who
never could resist her affectionate summons, and who enjoyed his society
far more in his own home than elsewhere, hastened to Amity street. I
found him just completing his series of papers called "_The Literati of
New York_." 'Now,' said he, displaying in laughing triumph several
little rolls of narrow paper (he always wrote thus for the press), 'I am
going to show you by the difference of length in these the different
degrees of estimation in which I hold all you literary people. In each
of these one of you is rolled up and fully discussed. Come, Virginia,
and help me.' And one by one they unfolded them. At last they came to
one which seemed interminable. Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of
the room with one end and her husband went to the opposite with the
other. 'And whose linked 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.'"

From this account--the exaggerated phrases of which will be noted--it
would appear that a great degree of intimacy existed between Poe and his
fair visitor, when he could in his own home--the two tiny rooms in Amity
street--write "hour after hour" undisturbed by her presence. Virginia
was delighted with her new friend, but Mrs. Clemm, noting these frequent
and lengthy visits, regarded her with a suspicious eye. Too well she
knew of the platonic friendships of her Eddie; but there appeared
something in this affair beyond what was usual, and, in fact, gossip
had already begun to link together their names. Mrs. Osgood herself
seems to have relied upon Mrs. Poe's frequent invitations and fondness
for her society as a shield against meddlesome tongues, but in vain--for
not only were the jealous and vigilant eyes of Poe's mother-in-law bent
upon her, but those of the "starry sisterhood" as well. There was a
flutter and a chatter in the literary dovecote, and at length one of the
starry ones--Mrs. Ellet--concluded it to be her bounden duty to inquire
into the matter. Calling at Fordham one day, in Poe's absence, she and
Mrs. Clemm, who had probably never before met, engaged in a confidential
discussion, in the course of which the irate mother-in-law showed the
visitor a letter from Mrs. Osgood to Poe (one wonders how she got
possession of that letter), the contents of which were so opposed to all
the latter's ideas of propriety that it