Philadelphia, where he wrote various magazine
articles and stories, and did part of the work of preparing a school
textbook on "Conchology." He soon became associate editor of _The
Gentleman's Magazine_ with its proprietor Burton. The following year,
1840, his first volume of stories was published, under the title,
"Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." The volume was not a popular
success. An edition of seven hundred and fifty copies was barely
disposed of, and all that Poe received was twenty copies for
distribution among his friends.

His connection with Burton's magazine did not last above a year.
Burton had been a comic actor, and offered prizes which Poe says he
never intended to pay. Poe's remarks on this transaction caused the
rupture.

Poe had already been thinking about starting a periodical of his own,
and now he sent out the prospectus of _The Penn Magazine_. To found a
magazine which should be better and higher in literary art than any
other in America was his lifelong ambition. He tried again and again
to do this, first with _The Penn Magazine_, and later with a
periodical to be called _The Stylus_. He never succeeded, however.

George R. Graham, proprietor of the _Saturday Evening Post_, now
bought _The Gentleman's Magazine_, united it with a periodical of his
own called _The Casket_, and named the new venture _Graham's
Magazine_. Of this Poe soon became the editor.

After Poe's death, Mr. Graham published an article in which he said
that, while he was in Philadelphia, Poe seemed to think only of the
happiness and welfare of his family. There were but two things for
which he cared to have money--to give them comforts and to start a
magazine of his own. He never spent any money on himself. Everything
was intrusted to Mrs. Clemm, who managed all his household affairs.
His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of
beauty, which he felt was fading before his eyes. "I have seen him,"
says Mr. Graham, "hovering around her when she was ill, with all the
fond fear and tender anxiety of a mother for her first-born--her
slightest cough causing him a shudder, a heart chill, that was
visible. I rode out one summer evening with them, and the remembrance
of his watchful eyes, eagerly bent upon the slightest change of hue in
that loved face, haunts me yet as the memory of a sad strain. It was
this hourly anticipation of her loss which made him a sad and
thoughtful man, and lent a mournful