was for one of The Dreamer's superstitious turn
of mind and his love of words and belief in their power, an
attraction--a significance in the very names. He said them over and over
again to himself--rolled them on his tongue, fascinated with their sound
and with their suggestiveness.

He bade Virginia and "Muddie" keep up brave hearts, for they would turn
their backs upon this cold, inhospitable New York and set up their
household gods in the "City of Brotherly Love." The city of Penn, he
added, was the place for one of his calling--laughing as he spoke, at
the feeble pun--but there was new hope and life in the laugh. In Penn's
city, even if disappointments should come they would be able to bear
them, for how should human beings suffer in the "City of Brotherly
Love?"

CHAPTER XXIV.

The year was waning--the year 1838--when Edgar Poe removed his family
from New York. About the hour of noon, upon a pleasant day of the spring
following, he might have been seen to turn from the paved streets of the
"City of Brotherly Love," and to enter, and walk briskly along, a grassy
thoroughfare of Spring Garden--a village-like suburb.

He was going home to Virginia and the Mother--to a new home in this
village which they had been first tempted to explore by its delightful
name and which they had found seeing was to love, for in its appearance
the name was justified. The quiet streets were lined with trees just
coming into leaf, in which birds were building, happy and unafraid, and
spring flowers were blooming in little plots before many of the
unpretentious homes.

The place also possessed a more practical attraction in the
reasonableness of its house-rents. Delightfully low was the price asked
for a small, Dutch-roofed cottage that was just to their minds. It was
small, yet quite large enough to hold the three and their modest
possessions, and about it hung a quaint charm that might have been
wanting in a more ambitious abode. Though in excellent preservation it
had a pleasantly time-worn air and there was moss, in velvety green
patches, on its sloping roof. It was set somewhat back from the street,
with a bit of garden spot in front of it, in whose rich soil violets and
single hyacinths--blue and white--were blooming, and its square porch
supported a climbing rose, heavy with buds, that only needed training
to make it a bower of beauty.

After having tried several more or less unsatisfactory homes during
their brief