and all who came through the
white-washed gate and sat down in the green-hooded porch or passed
through it into the bright and tasteful rooms felt the poetic charm
which this son of genius and his exquisite bit of a wife and the stately
mother with the "Mater Dolorosa" expression, threw over their simple
surroundings.

Among those who found their way thither was "Billy" Burton, an
Englishman, and an actor, who though a graduate of Cambridge was "better
known as a commedian than as a literary man." He had written several
books, however, and was the publisher of _The Gentleman's Magazine_, of
Philadelphia. Here too, came intimately, Mr. Alexander, one of the
founders of _The Saturday Evening Post_, to which The Dreamer was a
frequent contributor, and Mr. Clarke, first editor of _The Post_ and
others of what Edgar Poe's friend, Wilmer, would have dubbed the "press
gang" of Philadelphia.

To be intimate with The Dreamer meant to adore the little wife with the
face of a Luca della Robbia chorister and the voice which should have
belonged to one--with the merry, irresistible ways of a perfectly happy
child,--and to revere the mother.

The cottage was also found to be large enough (as the fame of its master
grew) to be the destination of letters from the literary stars of the
day. Longfellow and Lowell and Washington Irving, on this side of the
water, and Dickens, in England, were among Edgar Poe's numerous
correspondents while a dweller in the rose-embowered cottage in Spring
Garden.

In addition to the stories, poems, essays and critiques which the
indefatigable Dreamer was putting out, he found time to publish a
collection of his "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," in book form.
He was also (unfortunately for him) induced to prepare a work on
sea-shells for the use of schools--"The Conchologist's First Book," it
was called. This was unmistakably a mere "pot-boiler" and confessedly a
compilation, but it set the little authors whose namby-pamby works the
self-appointed Defender of the Purity of Style in American Letters had
consigned to an early grave, like a nest of hornets buzzing about his
ears.

"Plagarism!" was the burden of their hum.

Even while the discordant chorus was being chanted, however, his
wonderfully original tales continued to make their appearance at
intervals--chiefly in _The Gentleman's Magazine_, whose editor, at
"Billy" Burton's invitation, he had become.

* * * *