present parting
with the Allans, yet in his mind they became inseparably connected. He
recalled his happiness in his first essays at composition, made at the
Manor School, and told himself that, though he did not know it at the
time, that was the first step toward his life work. He was now, here in
Boston, the city of his birth, about to take the second; for the hour
had arrived when his work would be given to the world!

Across his knees he held the box containing his precious manuscripts. He
arose from the bench and turning toward the lower end of the Common,
walked, with brisk, hopeful step down town, in the direction of a
well-known publishing house whose location he had already ascertained.

Edgar Poe had known sorrow, real and imaginary; he was now to have his
first meeting with Disappointment, bitter and grim.

Of all the persons who had ever seen his work, every one had been warm
in its praise--everyone saving John Allan only. Some had been positively
glowing. True, they had not been publishers, yet among them there had
been gentlemen and ladies of taste and culture. But here was a different
matter. Here was a personage with whom he had not reckoned, but who was
the door, as it were, through which his work must pass into the world.
He was unmistakably a personage. His bearing, though modest, spoke of
power. His dress, though unobtrusive, was in the perfect taste which
only the prosperous can achieve and maintain. His features were cast in
the mold of the well-bred. He was past middle age and his naturally fine
countenance was beautiful with the ennobling lines which time leaves
upon the face of the seeker after truth. He was courteous--most
Bostonians and many publishers are. He was sympathetic. He was
undoubtedly intellectual, but the eyes that regarded through big,
gold-rimmed spectacles, the romantic beauty, the prominent brow and the
distinguished air of the sweet-voiced youth before him, wore a not only
thoughtful, but something more--a distinctly shrewd and practical
expression. In them was no awe of the bare mention of "original poetry."

He took the little rolls of manuscript into his strong, and at the same
time smooth and well-shapen hands, and drew them out to their full
length with the manner of one who handled as good every day. He cast his
eyes rapidly down the sheets--_too_ rapidly, it seemed to the poet--with
a not unkind, yet critical air, while the sensitive youth before him
turned red and w