following day. Mrs. Mackenzie laughed, but
from Mrs. Carter, the mother of two of the culprits, and who was gifted
with eloquence, they got the "wigging" which they had been anxious to
avoid. And from accounts, Poe enjoyed it all immensely.

A lady told me that one evening, going over to Duncan Lodge, her
attention was attracted by the sound of voices in the garden, where she
beheld all the young men in the broad central alley engaged in the
classic game of "leapfrog." When it came to Mr. Poe's turn, she said,
"he took a swift run and skimmed over their backs like a bird, seeming
hardly to touch the ground. I never saw the like." Mr. Jones, Mrs.
Mackenzie's son-in-law, who was rather large and heavy, came to grief in
his performance, and no one laughed more heartily than did Poe.

Was this the melancholy, morbid, "weird and wholly incomprehensible
being" that the world has pictured the author of _The Raven_? Among
these youthful spirits and his old friends, the depressing influences of
his late life and home--the poverty, the friendlessness--seemed to
vanish, and his real disposition reasserted itself. Pity that it could
not have been always so. I am convinced that a great deal of Poe's
unhappiness and apparent reserve and solitariness was owing to his
obscure home life, which kept him apart from all genial social
influences. At the North, wherever seen out of his business hours, he
appears to have been "alone and solitary, proud and melancholy
looking," says one, who had no idea of the loneliness of spirit, the
lack of genial companionship, which made him so. With a few he was on
friendly terms, but of intimate friends or associates he had not one so
far as is known.

Of the Mackenzies, so closely associated with Poe during his lifetime,
I may be allowed to say that a more attractive family group I have
rarely known. Beside those I have mentioned were the two youngest
members, "Mr. Dick" and Mattie or "Mat"--wayward, generous, warm-hearted
Mat, indifferent to people's opinion and heedless of conventionalities.
She cared for nothing so much as her horse and dog, and spent an hour
each day in the stables, while her aunt, Miss Jane, would exclaim in
despair: "I don't know what to do with Martha. I cannot make a lady of
her;" to which she would answer with a satisfied assurance that nature
had never intended her to be a lady.

But about this time--in October--Mat was married. There are ladies
living who have heard fro