wise not have had."

This last paragraph of Colonel Preston's recollections cast a suggestive
light upon the causes which rendered unhappy the lad's early life and
tended to blight his prospective hopes. Although mixing with members of
the best families of the province, and naturally endowed with hereditary
and native pride,--fostered by the indulgence of wealth and the
consciousness of intellectual superiority,--Edgar Poe was made to feel
that his parentage was obscure, and that he himself was dependent upon
the charity and caprice of an alien by blood. For many lads these things
would have had but little meaning, but to one of Poe's proud temperament
it must have been a source of constant torment, and all allusions to it
gall and wormwood. And Mr. Allan was not the man to wean Poe from such
festering fancies: as a rule he was proud of the handsome and talented
boy, and indulged him in all that wealth could purchase, but at other
times he treated him with contumely, and made him feel the bitterness of
his position.

Still Poe did maintain his leading position among the scholars at that
Virginian academy, and several still living have favored us with
reminiscences of him. His feats in swimming to which Colonel Preston has
alluded, are quite a feature of his youthful career. Colonel Mayo
records one daring performance in natation which is thoroughly
characteristic of the lad. One day in mid-winter, when standing on the
banks of the James River, Poe dared his comrade into jumping in, in
order to swim to a certain point with him. After floundering about in
the nearly frozen stream for some time, they reached the piles upon
which Mayo's Bridge was then supported, and there attempted to rest and
try to gain the shore by climbing up the log abutment to the bridge.
Upon reaching the bridge, however, they were dismayed to find that its
plank flooring overlapped the abutment by several feet, and that it was
impossible to ascend it. Nothing remained for them but to let go their
slippery hold and swim back to the shore. Poe reached the bank in an
exhausted and benumbed condition, whilst Mayo was rescued by a boat just
as he was succumbing. On getting ashore Poe was seized with a violent
attack of vomiting, and both lads were ill for several weeks.

Alluding to another quite famous swimming feat of his own, the poet
remarked, "Any 'swimmer in the falls' in my days would have swum the
Hellespont, and thought nothing of the matter.