art that he added:

"The situation is agreeable to me for many reasons--but alas! it appears
that nothing can now give me pleasure--or the slightest gratification.
Excuse me, my Dear Sir, if in this letter you find much incoherency. My
feelings at this moment are pitiable indeed. You will believe me when I
say that I am still miserable in spite of the great improvement in my
circumstances; for a man who is writing for effect does not write thus.
My heart is open before you--if it be worth reading, read it. I am
wretched and know not why. Console me--for you can. Convince me that it
is worth one's while to live. Persuade me to do what is right. You will
not fail to see that I am suffering from a depression of spirits which
will ruin me if it be long continued. Write me then, and quickly. Urge
me to do what is right. Your words will have more weight with me than
the words of others--for you were my friend when no one else was."

Some men of more goodness than wisdom might have read this letter with
impatience--perhaps disgust, and tossed it into the waste basket, not
deeming it worth an answer, or pigeon-holed it to be answered in a more
convenient season--which would probably never have arrived. It is easy
to imagine the contempt with which John Allan would have perused it. Not
so John Kennedy. Busy lawyer and successful man of letters and of the
world though he was, he had gone out of his way to stretch a hand to the
gifted starveling he had discovered struggling for a foothold on the
bottommost rung of the ladder of literary fame, and had not only helped
him up the ladder but had drawn him, in his weakness and his strength,
into the circle of his friendship, and now he had no idea of letting him
go. Mr. Kennedy was a great lawyer with a great tenderness for human
nature, born of a great knowledge of it. He did not expect young
men--even talented ones--to be faultless or to be fountains of sound
sense, or even always to be strong of will. When he received Edgar Poe's
wail he had just returned to his office after a long vacation and found
himself over head and ears in work; but he responded at once. If it had
seemed to him a foolish letter he did not say so. If it had shocked or
disappointed him, he did not say so. He wrote in the kindly tolerant and
understanding tone he always took with his protege a letter wholesome
and bracing as a breath from the salt sea.

"My dear Poe," he began, in his simple familiar way, "I am