in
such pursuits. It was in the spring of 1848--more than a year after his
dissociation from Graham--that he wrote the story of "The Gold Bug," for
which he was paid a prize of one hundred dollars. It has relation to
Captain Kyd's treasure, and is one of the most remarkable illustrations
of his ingenuity of construction and apparent subtlety of reasoning. The
interest depends upon the solution of an intricate cypher. In the autumn
of 1844 Poe removed to New York.

It was while he resided in Philadelphia that I became acquainted with
him. His manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet
and gentlemanly; he was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance; and
when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused
by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was
impressed by the singular neatness and the air of refinement in his home.
It was in a small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods
far from the center of the town, and though slightly and cheaply
furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it
seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius. For this and for most of
the comforts he enjoyed in his brightest as in his darkest years, he was
chiefly indebted to his mother-in-law, who loved him with more than
maternal devotion and constancy.

He had now written his most acute criticisms and his most admirable
tales. Of tales, beside those to which I have referred, he had produced
"The Descent into the Maelstroem," "The Premature Burial," "The Purloined
Letter," "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," and its sequel, "The Mystery of
Marie Roget." The scenes of the last three are in Paris, where the
author's friend, the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, is supposed to reveal to
him the curiosities of his experience and observation in matters of
police. "The Mystery of Marie Roget" was first published in the autumn of
1842, before an extraordinary excitement, occasioned by the murder of a
young girl named Mary Rogers, in the vicinity of New York, had quite
subsided, though several months after the tragedy. Under the pretense of
relating the fate of a Parisian _grisette_, Mr. Poe followed in minute
detail the essential while merely paralleling the inessential facts of
the real murder. His object appears to have been to reinvestigate the
case and to settle his own conclusions as to the probable culprit. There
is a great deal of hair-splitti