nt in a happy visit to Baltimore, where he made
the acquaintance of his father's kindred and succeeded in publishing the
new poem, with a revised edition of the old ones.

For the first time, his work appeared under his own signature:

"Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems. By Edgar A. Poe."

The new poem was unintelligible to the critics--but what of that? he
asked himself. One of his optimistic moods was upon him. He despised the
critics for their lack of perception and as he held the slim volume in
his hands and gazed upon that, to him, wondrous title-page, his
countenance shone as though it had caught the reflection of the magic
star itself. What mattered all the wounds, all the woes of his past
life? He had entered into a land where dreams came true!

For the first time, too, his work received recognition as poetry, in the
literary world. It was but a nod, yet it was a beginning; and it pleased
him to think that this first nod of greeting as a poet came to him from
Boston, where his mother had found "her best, most sympathetic friends."
Before publishing his new book he had sent some extracts from it to Mr.
John Neal, Editor of the _Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette_, who
promptly gave them a place in his paper, with some kind words commending
them to lovers of "genuine poetry."

"He is entirely a stranger to me," wrote the Boston editor, of the
twenty-year-old poet, "but with all his faults, if the remainder of Al
Aaraaf and Tamerlane are as good as the body of the extracts here given,
he will deserve to stand high--very high--in the estimation of the
shining brotherhood."

In a burst of gratitude the happy poet wrote to Mr. Neal his thanks for
these "very first words of encouragement," he had received.

"I am young," he confided to this earliest friend in the charmed world
of letters, "I am young--not yet twenty--_am_ a poet if deep worship of
all beauty can make me one--and wish to be so in the common meaning of
the word."

CHAPTER XVI.

Upon a dark and drizzling November night of the year 1830, four cadets
of West Point Academy sat around a cosy open fire in Room 28, South
Barracks, spinning yarns for each other's amusement.

One of them--the one with the always handsome and scholarly, at times
soft and romantic, but tonight, dare-devil face, was easily recognizable
as Edgar the Goodfellow, frequently appearing in the quite opposite
character of Edgar the Dreamer, and commonly known as Edgar