amily. So her
furniture went, piece by piece, the furniture which Miss Poe had so
often described--the parlor box-lounge upon which she slept; the
dining-table, which stood in the midst of the room, ready for the meal
which was so seldom placed upon it; the large engraving above the
mantelpiece, and the collection of sea-shells--all disappeared, until
the once cosey little apartment presented a bare and poverty-stricken
appearance. Mrs. Gove, one of the literary women of the day, described
it as being furnished with only a checked matting, a small corner-stand,
a hanging-shelf of books and four chairs.

Years afterward, when strangers would visit the cottage at Fordham, they
would hear from the neighbors pathetic accounts of the family during
this summer of 1846.

"We knew that they were poor," said one, "but they tried to keep it to
themselves. Many a time I have wanted to send them things from my
garden, but was afraid to do so."

One old dame said to a New York reporter: "I've known when they were out
of provisions, for then Mrs. Clemm, who always seemed cheerful, would
come out with a basket and a shining case-knife and go 'round digging
greens (dandelions). Once I said to her, says I, 'Greens may be took too
frequent.' 'Oh, no,' says she, smiling, 'they cool the blood, and Eddie
likes them.'"

Thus poor Mrs. Clemm, with her assumed cheerfulness, would seek to
produce the impression that their dinner of wild herbs was a matter of
choice instead of necessity.

Another neighbor said to a visitor: "I never saw checked matting last as
theirs did. There was nothing upstairs but an old cot in a little
hall-room or closet, where Mrs. Clemm slept, and an old table and chair
and bed in the next room, where Mr. Poe wrote. But you could eat your
dinner off the two floors."

The testimony of still another was: "In the kitchen she had only a
little stove, a pine table and a chair; but the floor was as white as
the table, and the tins as bright as silver. I don't think that she had
more than a dozen pieces of crockery, all on a little shelf in the
kitchen. The only meat I've ever known them to have was a five-cent bone
for soup or a few butcher's trimmings for a stew; but it seemed Mrs.
Clemm could make a little of anything go twice as far as other people
could."

In the early part of this summer Virginia's health appeared better than
usual. A neighbor who lived nearest them said to a visitor to Poe's old
home: "In fine