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. But no one dared

/;>■■:■■ l

EDGAR

ALLAN

POE.

to speak, Mr. Poe was so sensitive and irritable. k quick as steel and flint,' said one who knew him in those days. And he would not allow a word about the danger of her dying; the mention of it drove him wild." At the time of the removal to Pordham she was but a shadow of her former self, and was plainly doomed to an early death. A recent writer in a New York newspaper relates that in 184G he was sent twice, as a messenger boy, to

liver proofs to Poe and wait for the reading of them. " Un Doth occasions I saw Mrs. Poe, then an invalid. On the first visit she was sitting in the sun on the little porch of the cottage, wrapped in what appeared to be a counterpane, her husband on one side of her and her mother on the other. At the next visit she was on a couch covered with a man's overcoat, for the weather was chilly and the house was cold. The recollection of her appearance is still vivid as of a picture of a saint seen long ago in a receding light. Probably in full health she was a beautiful girl, but at this time whatever vital beauty she had was already mystic if not spectral.