marked quietly that
on his next delivery of a public lecture "he would take Rose along, to
act the part of the raven, in which she seemed born to excel." ...

It is with feelings of deep sadness, even after the lapse of so many
years, that I approach the close of these reminiscences.

Poe one day told me that it was necessary that he should go to New
York. He must make certain preparations for establishing his magazine,
the _Stylus_, but he should in less than two weeks return to Richmond,
where he proposed henceforth to reside. He looked forward to this
arrangement with great pleasure. "I mean to turn over a new leaf; I
shall begin to lead a new life," he said, confidently. He had often
spoken to me of his books,--"few, but _recherche_,"--and he now
proposed to send certain of these by express, for my perusal. "You
must annotate them extensively," he said. "A book wherein the minds of
the author and the reader are thus brought in contact is to me a
hundredfold increased in interest. It is like flint and steel." One of
the books which he desired me to read was Mrs. Browning's poems, and
another one of Hawthorne's works. I remember his saying of the latter
that he was "indisputably the best prose writer in America;" that
"Irving and the rest were mere commonplace beside him;" and that
"there was more inspiration of true genius in Hawthorne's prose than
in all Longfellow's poetry." This may serve to give an idea of his own
opinion of what constitutes genius, though some of Longfellow's poems
he pronounced "perfect of their kind."

The evening of the day previous to that appointed for his departure
from Richmond, Poe spent at my mother's. He declined to enter the
parlors, where a number of visitors were assembled, saying he
preferred the more quiet sitting-room; and here I had a long and
almost uninterrupted conversation with him. He spoke of his future,
seeming to anticipate it with an eager delight, like that of youth. He
declared that the last few weeks in the society of his old and new
friends had been the happiest that he had known for many years, and
that when he again left New York he should there leave behind all the
trouble and vexation of his past life....

In speaking of his own writings Poe expressed his conviction that he
had written his best poems, but that in prose he might yet surpass
what he had already accomplished....

He was the last of the party to leave the house. We were standing on
the portico