ncrease of salary. With the
opening spring began plans for the divulging of the great secret--for
public acknowledgment of the marriage. But how was it to be done?--That
was the question! Edgar Poe knew too well the disapproval with which the
world regarded secret marriages--with which he himself regarded them,
ordinarily. His sense of refinement of fitness, of the sacredness of the
marriage tie, revolted from the very idea.

In what fashion then, could he and his little bride proclaim their
secret that would not do violence to their own taste or set a buzz of
gossip going? That the horrid lips of gossip should so much as breathe
the name of his Virginia--that Mrs. Grundy should dare shrug her
decorous shoulders, if ever so slightly, at mention of that sacred
name--. The bare suggestion was intolerable!

At last a solution offered itself to his mind. Not for an instant did he
regret the sacred ceremony in Christ Church, Baltimore. Not for worlds
would he have cut short for one moment of time the duration of the
beautiful spiritual marriage when he had been able to say to himself:
"She whose presence fills my heart and my life--whose spirit I can feel
near me at my work, in my hours of recreation and in my dreams, is my
wife." But of this exquisite, this inexpressibly dear union the world
was in utter ignorance. It was known only to the Mother, the priest and
the aged sexton. To these witnesses always, as to themselves, their
marriage would date from the moment when the blessing was invoked above
their bowed heads in Christ Church, but to the world--why not let it
date from the day in which they would claim each other before the world,
in Richmond?

The thing was most simple! A second ceremony in the presence of a few
friends--a brief announcement in next day's paper--and their life would
be begun with the dignity, the prestige, of public marriage.

* * * * *

The sixteenth of May was the day chosen for the event which was more
like a wedding in Arcady than in latter-day society. As at the secret
ceremony, the customary preparations for a wedding were conspicuously
absent; yet was not the whole town gala with sunshine and verdure and
May-bloom and bird-song?

Edgar Poe looked every inch a bridegroom as, with his girl-wife upon his
arm, he stepped forth from Mrs. Yarrington's boarding-house, opposite
the green slopes of Capitol Square. A bridegroom indeed!--plainly, but
perfectly appa