Though his genius was recognized and lie had many sincere friends, he did not attain substantial success in New York City. It is related that his principal regular employment after coming there was as a writer for the Evening Mirror, on a salary of ten dollars a week. While living in New York he wrote the " Raven." In the spring of 1846 lie removed to Fordham, renting for a hundred dollars a year a little frame cottage. The house was "pleasantly situated, with cherry trees about it, but was of the humble description and contained in all but three small rooms and a kind of a closet. It was furnished with only the necessary articles ami a few keepsakes, among them presentation copies of the works of Mrs. Browning, to whom Poe had dedicated his poems, and from whom he had received the kindest acknowledgments. " It is said that he procured the means to take the Fordham cottage and maintain existence there for a time from the proceeds of a libel suit, which yielded him several hundreds of dollars.

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

With him he brought to Pordham his wife Virginia -- his " Annabel Lee " -- and her mother, the tender, devoted Mrs. Clemm. Virginia Olemm was his cousin, whom he had married in her girlhood. A professional singer, she had ruptured a blood vessel some four years previously, and had ever since been in declining health. Even while they were living in Philadelphia she kt could not bear the slightest exposure, and needed the utmost care; and all those conveniences as to apartments and surroundings which are so important in the case of an invalid were almost matters of life and death to her. And yet the room where she lay for weeks [in Philadelphia], hardly able to breathe, except as she was fanned, was a little place with the ceiling so low over the narrow bed that her head almost touched it.