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. Her face was thin and white, the kind of pallor that Carlyle calls ' the herald of the pale repose,' and her large dark eyes were

GENERAL

COUNTY

HISTORY

strangely and wonderingly obtrusive by contrast. I remember that they affected me with something like a searching omnipresence while I was waiting. ... I remember that while I was waiting for him, his wife, who had gone into another room, coughed once or twice, and I saw him wince at the sound.'" During his first year at Fordham Poe also was in delicate health, and probably for much of that time he was held in powerful bonds by his besetting sin. He accomplished little literary work of importance, and when the winter of 1847 came on the family was in great destitution. " Mrs. Gove, hearing of this, visited the family, and found the dying wife with only sheets and a coverlet on the bed, wrapped in her husband's coat. She appealed to Mrs. Maria Louise Shaw, who immediately relieved the necessities of the family and raised a subscription of 800." Shortly afterward the plain facts were published in the New York newspapers, and further relief was forthcoming.