eland,
who was a very pious Presbyterian, it can only be hoped that he never
discovered in what manner he had been imposed upon.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE POES IN RICHMOND.

When Poe went to Richmond as assistant editor to Mr. White, it had been
with the expectation of resuming his old place among his former friends
and associates--a prospect which, as he himself stated in a letter to
that gentleman, had afforded him very great pleasure. He had no idea of
the altered estimate in which he was held by some of these, and of the
general prejudice existing against him in consequence of the exaggerated
reports concerning his rupture with the Allans and the later story of
his attempt to force himself into Mr. Allan's presence. It is true that
the Mackenzies, the Sullys, Dr. Robert G. Cabell and his wife, with some
others of the best people, remained his firm friends; but he found
himself without social standing and with but few associates among his
former acquaintances. It was even said that when a leading society lady,
enjoying a literary reputation--the mother of Mrs. Julia Mayo Cabell
and Mrs. General Winfield Scott--gave an entertainment to which she
invited the talented young editor of the _Messenger_, two of the most
priggish of these gentlemen declined to attend rather than meet their
former schoolmate, Edgar Poe.

This state of things must undoubtedly have served to irritate and
embitter one of Poe's proud and sensitive nature, and may have partly
led to the dissipated habits in which he now for the first time began to
indulge--besides, in some measure, influencing the extreme bitterness
and severity, or, as it has been called, _venom_ of the criticism for
which the _Messenger_ began to be noted. Never before had he been
accused of unamiability of disposition, but his temper seems suddenly to
have changed, and he was called "haughty, overbearing and quarrelsome."

A great and, it is to be feared, irreparable obloquy has attached to
Poe's name through the utterance of a single individual--a Mr. Ferguson,
who was employed as a printer's assistant in the office of the
_Messenger_ at the time of Poe's editorship of that magazine. Not many
years ago, Mr. Ferguson, who is still living, said, in answer to some
inquiry concerning the poet: "There never was a more perfect gentleman
than Mr. Poe when he was sober," but that at other times "he would just
as soon lie down in the gutter as anywhere else." And this assertion h