r back and waving her tail like a plume, in the air
she rubbed her glossy sides against his ankle in a manner that was truly
irresistible. All three gave her a warm welcome. Edgar regarded her
appearance as a good omen; Virginia was delighted to have a pet, and
"Catalina," as they named her, became from the moment a regular and
favorite member of the family.

* * * * *

The cottage contained but five rooms--three downstairs (including the
kitchen) and upstairs two, with low-pitched, shelving walls and narrow
little slits of windows on a level with the floor. But as has been said,
it was large enough--large enough to shelter love and happiness and
genius--large enough to hold the dream of the Valley of the Many-Colored
Grass, with its fair river and its enchanted trees and flowers, in which
the three dreamers lived apart and for each other only.

It was large enough for the freest expansion the world had yet seen of
the vivid-hued imagination of Edgar Poe.

Night and day his brain was busy--"fancy unto fancy linking"--and the
periodicals teemed with his work.

In _The American Museum_, of Baltimore appeared his fantastic
prose-poem, "Ligeia," with his theory of the power of the human will for
a text--his favorite of all of his "tales"--_his_ favorite, in the
weakness of whose own will lay the real tragedy of his life! In _The
Gift_, of Philadelphia, appeared, a little later the dramatic
"conscience-story," "William Wilson," with its clear-cut pictures of
school-life at old Stoke-Newington. _The Baltimore Book_ gave the
thrilling fable, "Silence," to the world. The weirdly beautiful "Haunted
Palace" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" followed in quick
succession--in _The American Museum_.

"The Fall of the House of Usher," brought The Dreamer a pat-on-the back
from "little Tom" White, who in writing of the tale in _The Southern
Literary Messenger_, informed the world: "We always predicted that Mr.
Poe would reach a high grade in American literature; only we wish Mr.
Poe would stick to the department of criticism; there he is an able
professor."

Wrote James Russell Lowell, of the same story,

"Had its author written nothing else it would have been enough
to stamp him as a man of genius."

The cottage in Spring Garden was large enough too, for the sweet uses
of hospitality. By the time the roses on the porch were open, friends
and admirers began to find their way to it,