at once accepted the damaging statements; but
in every case the poison had been administered, and was at work.

* * * * *

There was just one class among the writers of the day sacred from the
attacks of Edgar Poe's pen. Before almost everything else The Dreamer
was chivalrous. The "starry sisterhood of poetesses" and authoresses,
therefore, escaped his criticisms. One of his contemporaries said of
him that he sometimes mistook his vial of prussic acid for his ink-pot.
In writing of authors of the gentle sex, his ink-pot became a pot of
honey.

Several of these literary ladies living in New York had their salons,
where they received, upon regular days, their brothers and sisters of
the pen, and at which The Dreamer became a familiar figure.

"I meet Mr. Poe very often at the receptions," gossiped one of the fair
poetesses in a letter to a friend in the country. "He is the observed of
all observers. His stories are thought wonderful and to hear him repeat
'The Raven' is an event in one's life. People seem to think there is
something uncanny about him, and the strangest stories are told and what
is more, _believed_, about his mesmeric experiences--at the mention of
which he always smiles. His smile is captivating! Everybody wants to
know him, but only a few people seem to get well acquainted with him."

Chief among the salons of New York was that of Miss Anne Charlotte
Lynch--who was afterward Mrs. Botta. An entre to her home was the
most-to-be-desired social achievement New York could offer, for it meant
not only to know the very charming lady herself, but to meet her
friends; and she had drawn around her a circle made up of the persons
and personages--men and women--best worth knowing. She became one of The
Dreamer's most intimate friends, and always made him and his wife
welcome at her "evenings." It was not long after "The Raven" had set the
town marching to the word "nevermore," that he made his first visit
there--a visit which long stood out clear in the memories of all
present.

In the cavernous chimney a huge grate full of glowing coals threw a
ruddy warmth into Miss Lynch's spacious drawing-room. Waxen tapers in
silver and in crystal candelabra, and in sconces, filled the apartment
with a blaze of soft light, lit up the sparkling eyes and bright,
intellectual faces of the assembled company, and showed to advantage the
jewels and laces of the ladies and the broadcloth of the ge