story of the unhappy master of the Raven.
It was she who generously came forward as "one of the friends" of him who
was said to have no friends. She was his steady champion from first to
last. Whether it was some crackbrain scribbler who tried to prove Poe
"mad," some accomplished scholar who endeavored to disparage him in order
to magnify some other writer, or some silly woman who attempted to foist
herself into notice by relating "imaginary facts" concerning the poet's
hidden life, Mrs. Whitman was always ready to defend her dead friend.

One of the most touching incidents in Poe's early life was his affection
and fidelity to Mrs. Helen Stannard, who had completely won the sensitive
boy's heart by her kindness to him when he came to her house with her son,
a favorite school-friend. This lady died under circumstances of peculiar
sorrow, and her young admirer was in the habit of visiting her grave every
night. It was she--"the one idolatrous and purely ideal love" of his
passionate boyhood--who inspired those exquisite lines, "Helen, thy beauty
is to me." Mr. Richard Henry Stoddard, in his article on Poe published in
_Harper's Monthly_ for May, 1872, says, in allusion to Mrs. Stannard: "The
memory of this lady _is said_ to have suggested the most beautiful of his
minor poems, 'Helen,' though I am not aware _that Poe ever countenanced
the idea_." As Mrs. Whitman had distinctly stated in _Edgar Poe and his
Critics_ that Mrs. Stannard _had_ inspired the poem, she addressed a note
to Mr. Stoddard upon the subject, to which he sent the following reply:
"MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN: So many months have elapsed since I wrote the paper
on Poe about which you write that I am unable to remember what I said in
it. I certainly had no intention to discredit any statement that you made
in _Edgar Poe and his Critics_, and if I have done so I am sorry for it,
and ask your forgiveness."

In one of Mrs. Whitman's letters, now lying before me, she says: "So much
has been written, and so much still continues to be written, about Poe by
persons who are either his avowed or secret enemies, that I joyfully
welcome every friendly or impartial word spoken in his behalf. His enemies
are uttering their venomous fabrications in every newspaper, and so few
voices can obtain a hearing in his defence. My own personal knowledge of
Mr. Poe was very brief, although it comprehended memorable incidents, and
was doubtless, as he kindly characterized it in one of h