Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/55

Rh "I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of slippers, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire kept in all night. We have now got four dollars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow three dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon. I feel in excellent spirits, and haven't drank a drop—so that I hope soon to get out of trouble. The very instant I scrape together enough money I will sent it on. You can't imagine how much we both do miss you. Sissy had a hearty cry last night, because you and Catterina weren't here. We are resolved to get two rooms the first moment we can. In the meantime it is impossible we could be more comfortable or more at home than we are. It looks as if it were going to clear up now. Be sure and go to the P. O. and have my letters forwarded. As soon as I write Lowell's article, I will send it to you, and get you to get the money from Graham. Give our best love to C."

But Poe the man is seen not merely in the unclouded clearness with which he saw and reproduced the men and things of his time but more especially in his reaction to the ideas and institutions that environed him. So far from holding himself apart and aloof, he fronted the old and the new of his day with an eager philosophic interest that would have kept his name afloat, if not alive, even though he had written no work of creative genius. "Poe had no sweep of intellectual outlook," says Brander Matthews, "no interest in the world of ideas, as he had no interest in the world of affairs." A verdict of this sort can be accounted for only on the supposition that its author