With this money he secured the Fordham cottage, at a rental of one hundred dollars a year, furnished it and removed there with his wife and her mother, Mrs. Clemm, who remained there until Poe's death in 1849. The grounds, comprising about two acres, are as interesting as the house, and have associations reaching back to Revolutionary times, when this neighborhood was a part of the ' neutral ground ' and the field of Cooper's ' Spy.' The lawn slopes into a grassy hollow. A massive ledge of blue-

THE OI-U DUTCH CHURCH, FOKDHAM.

gray rock overlooks the valley at the height of a hun • dred feet and forms the eastern wall of the place. The site is said to have been occupied at one time by a British batteiy. Now a tennis club, composed of young men and women of Fordham, meets on the lawn in summer. The rocky ledge commands a view of the Long Island hills in purple background and against the horizon. lu the growth of the city it is likely to become one of the choice sites for residences.

" The place rents for four hundred dollars a year. For several years it has been occupied by Mrs. E. D. Dechert, the widow of an engineer who drew many of the plans of Central Park, and afterward most of the avenues and drives of Fordham. A few of those who knew Poe and his family are still living in the neighborhood. One of these was his nearest neighbor, Mrs. Reuben Cromwell, then a young girl. She said recently that the first time she saw Poe he was up in a cherry-tree picking the fruit, and his wife stood beneath the tree. ' He was a nice-looking young man,' continued Mrs. Cromwell, ' and sociable.' His wife had come out here to get the good air, he said, and to dig in the ground and get well.