ry academy, and he had found out that army
life was not so fine a refuge from starvation as he had thought it. He
was a proud, melancholy young man, and in school and college had
learned many bad habits. He had no trade nor practical knowledge of
any kind of work, though he was quick and ingenious. He had studied
the art of writing, and this alone offered him the means of earning a
livelihood. How poor and precarious a chance it was, we shall see as
we go on.

While waiting for appointment to the Military Academy the preceding
year, Poe had made acquaintance with his father's relatives in
Baltimore. He formed some literary connections there, and had a volume
of his poems published. It was entitled "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and
Minor Poems, by Edgar A. Poe." "Al Aaraaf" was a poem about a star
that a great astronomer had seen blaze forth and then disappear.

When he left West Point in April, 1831, nearly two years after the
publication of his Baltimore volume, Poe was short of money; and to
supply his needs his fellow-students subscribed for a new edition of
his poems. For this, seventy-five cents was stopped out of the pay of
each, and a publisher in New York agreed to issue the book in good
style. The cadets thought his volume would contain the many funny
squibs he had written on the professors; but they were disappointed.

Poe next went to Baltimore. There he tried to get employment in vain.
Friends helped him, but it was some time before he made his first
literary success.

It happened at last that a weekly paper called the _Saturday Visiter_
was started in Baltimore. To give the paper popularity, two prizes
were offered, one of a hundred dollars for the best short story, and
the other of fifty for the best poem. Poe tried for both. He had six
short stories, which he copied in a neat little manuscript volume
entitled "Tales of the Folio Club." The poem he sent was "The
Coliseum."

The judges were well-known gentlemen of the city of Baltimore, one of
whom, John P. Kennedy, afterward became Poe's intimate friend. When
they met they looked over several stories, which did not interest them
very much. They then came to the "Tales of the Folio Club." One was
read aloud, and the three gentlemen were so much interested that they
kept on till they had read all, and at once decided to give the prize
to one of these. They chose Poe's famous story "A MS. Found in a
Bottle." Afterward they decided that his poem was the best su