d's
great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The
wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat
and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her
husband held her hands and her mother her feet. Mrs. Clemm was
passionately fond of her daughter, and her distress on account of
her illness and poverty and misery was dreadful to see."

This friend at once interested some benevolent people in the case, and
poor Virginia's last days were made comfortable by their aid. Poe's
heart seemed filled with inexpressible gratitude to all who aided him in
this sorest crisis of his life; and although he was much broken by his
loss, he rallied once more and was sober and industrious for a time.
Mrs. Clemm stood faithfully by him, and even watched over him through
some of the fearful seasons of delirium which followed his complete
giving up to the habits of drinking and of taking opium.

Of the final scenes of this unhappy life it is needless to write. They
have been often described, and though the accounts vary, the sum and
substance are the same. Poe was attacked with delirium-tremens in
Baltimore, and died in a hospital in that city in October, 1849.
Beautiful, gifted, and sensitive, proud, ambitious, and daring, endowed
with a subtle charm of manner as well as of person, amiable and
generous in his home life, loyal and devoted to his family, a very
pleasing picture is presented of the man if we look but on this side.
Could he have overcome the fatal fascination of drink, we might never
have seen the reverse side of all this. As it is, let us cover his
follies with our mantle of charity and dwell only upon his genius and
his virtues.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

During a portion of Thackeray's life there seemed to be in the public
mind a complete misapprehension of the character of the man. Superficial
readers of his books, who knew nothing of him personally, were fond of
applying the name of cynic to him; and he was even accused by some of
these of being a hater of his kind, a misanthropist, a bitter satirist,
a hard, ungenial man.

As no adequate personal memoir of him has ever been written, it being
understood by his family that such a publication would have been
distasteful to him, it has taken time to correct all the false
impressions that have gained credence in regard to the great humorist;
but at