Page:Edgar Allan Poe - a centenary tribute.pdf/106

 in close contact with his daily life, though his physical weakness and exhaustion may have sometimes led to "the dangerous conditions" against which "Mr. White warns him."

The beginning of the next year finds Poe, Mrs. Clemm, and Virginia in Richmond, where, upon his salary of $520 a year increased by extra work to about $800, he had offered them a home. On May 16, 1836, Poe was married to Virginia by the Rev. Amasa Converse, a Presbyterian minister and editor of the Southern Religious Telegraph.

Around the first first few months of their marriage some brightness hovers. Their income though small was certain, and confidence in his mental resources spurred Poe to incredible exertions. His work in the Messenger proves the man who coined this wealth from his brain guilty of no habitual excess excepting that of industry and entire disregard of his own mental and physical welfare. It was now that "Joseph Miller, Esq." made his bow in the opening chapters of "Autography," Poe's humor, never to be extinguished, bubbling to the top in these brilliant articles. Poe as editor of The Southern Literary Messenger raised the circulation from seven hundred to five thousand subscribers, an average of four articles from his pen appearing monthly—tales, essays, poems and alas! the fatal critiques that brought hosts of enemies to undermine him.

In the January number, 1837, Mr. White, the proprietor of the Messenger announced that "Mr. Poe, who has filled the Editorial Department with so much ability, retired from that station on the 3d instant . . ..