dmitted of it.
His habitual resort when in Baltimore was the Widow Meagher's place, on
the city front, inexpensive, but respectable, having an oyster and
liquor stand, and corresponding in some respects with the coffee shops
of San Francisco. Here I frequently met him."

"But about his death?"

"The mystery of the poet's death had remained a mystery for more than
forty years when there appeared in a Texas paper an article from the pen
of the editor, in which he gave a letter from a Dr. Snodgrass professing
to reveal the truth of the matter.

"About the time that this article was published there appeared one in
the San Francisco _Chronicle_ by a reporter of that paper, telling of an
interview which he had with this same Dr. Snodgrass, of whom he says:
'He was a well-known literary Bohemian of this city who long ago gave up
his profession and is spending his old age in a state of dreamy
existence from which he is seldom aroused except to correct some error
concerning people and things of past times, of which he possesses a mine
of reminiscences.'"

The Doctor, denying that Poe had died from dissipation, gave an account
of the manner of his death as he knew it, corresponding in all
particulars with that given by him to the Texas editor. In conclusion,
he said:

"Poe did not die of dissipation. I say that he was deliberately
murdered. He died of laudanum or some other drug forced upon him by his
kidnappers. When one said, 'What is the use of carrying around a dying
man?' they put him in a cab and sent him to the hospital. I was there
and saw it myself."

"Poe had been shifting about between Baltimore, Philadelphia and New
York for some years. Once he had been away for several months in
Richmond, and one evening turned up at the widow's. I was there when he
came in. Then it was drinks all round, and at length we were real jolly.
It was the eve of an election, and we started up town. There were four
of us, and we had not gone half a dozen squares when we were nabbed by
policemen, who were looking up voters to "coop." It was the practice in
those days to seize people, whether drunk or sober, and keep them locked
up until the polls were opened and then march them to every precinct in
control of the party having the coop. This coop was in the rear of an
engine-house on Calvert street. It was part of the plan to stupefy the
prisoners with drugged liquor. Next day we were voted at thirty
different places, it being as much