s soon to get into the first of those difficulties which ended by
wrecking his life. For, entering the University of Virginia, he made the
mistake of associating with a fast set, with whom he had no business,
and ended by losing heavy sums of money, which he was, of course, unable
to pay, and which his foster-father very properly refused to pay for
him. Instead, he removed the boy from college and put him to work in his
office at Richmond.

Edgar felt that, in refusing to pay his debts, his foster-father had
besmirched his honor. The thought rankled in his soul, and he ended by
running away from home. He got to Boston, somehow, and enlisted in the
army, serving for three years as a private. At the end of that time,
there was a reconciliation between him and his foster-father, and the
latter provided a substitute for him in the army, and secured him an
appointment to the military academy at West Point.

Why Poe should have felt that he was fitted for army life is difficult
to understand, since he had always been impatient of discipline; but to
West Point he went and very promptly got into trouble there, which
culminated, at the end of the year, in court-martial and dismissal. He
knew that his foster-father's patience was exhausted, and that he could
expect nothing more from him, and he soon proved himself incapable of
self-support.

He drifted from New York to Baltimore, often without knowing where his
next meal was coming from, and finally, at Baltimore, his father's
widowed sister gave him a home, and he soon married her fragile
daughter, Virginia Clemm. But he had long been a prey to intemperance,
and his habits in consequence were so irregular that he was unable to
retain any permanent position. The truth seems to be that Poe was of a
temperament so intensely nervous and sensitive that the smallest amount
of alcoholic stimulant excited him beyond control, and he lacked the
will-power to leave it alone altogether, which was his only chance of
safety.

Yet he had gained a certain reputation with discerning people by the
publication of a few poems of surprising merit, as well as a number of
tales as remarkable and compelling as have ever been written in any
language. That is a broad statement, and yet it is literally true. Not
only is Poe America's greatest poet, but he is still more decidedly her
greatest short-story writer--so much the greatest, that with the
exception of Nathaniel Hawthorne, she has never produce