r from me, just around the corner; and one Saturday he
came running up to our house, calling out, "Come along, Rob! We are
going to the Hermitage woods for chinquepins, and you must come too.
Uncle Billy is going for a load of pine-needles, and we can ride in his
wagon." Now, that showed his consideration; he knowing that I could not
walk the long distances that most boys could, and therefore seldom went
on one of their excursions."

In one of Poe's biographies is an absurd story to the effect that Mr.
Clarke, his first teacher, once on detecting him robbing a neighbor's
turnip-patch, tied one of the vegetables about his neck as a token of
disgrace, which the boy purposely wore home, when Mr. Allan, in a fury
at this insult to his adopted son, called on the teacher and threatened
him with personal chastisement. It is scarcely necessary at this day to
deny the truth of that story; but the following is what Mr. Clarke
himself says about it in an interview with a reporter in Baltimore some
years after Poe's death, he being at that time nearly eighty years
old.[4]

[4] This account, clipped from a Baltimore paper, was given by
Professor Clarke's son to a Richmond reporter in 1894.

"Edgar had a very sweet disposition. He was always cheerful, brimful of
mirth and a very great favorite with his schoolmates. I never had
occasion to speak a harsh word to him, much less to make him do penance.
He had a great ambition to excel."

He spoke with pride of Edgar as a student, especially in the classics.
He and Nat Howard on one vacation each wrote him a complimentary letter
in Latin, both equally excellent in point of scholarship; but Edgar's
was in verse, which Nat could not write.

"Whenever Poe came to Baltimore he would not forget to come and see me,
and I would offer him wine. It was the custom, you know. When he became
editor of Graham's Magazine and could afford it, he sent wine to me,
gratis.... I think that as boy and man Edgar loved me dearly. I am sure
I loved him.... Yes; he was a dear, open-hearted, cheerful and good boy;
and as a man he was a loving and affectionate friend to me. I went to
his funeral."

The old Professor said that Poe's sister, Rosalie, he had seen when her
brother was a pupil of his. "She was at that time about ten years old,
was pretty and a very sweet child."

Poe, after leaving Professor Clarke's, entered Dr. Burke's classical
school in 1832, where he remained until he went to the Unive