This appears to have been Poe’s last night at the university.  He left it never to return, yet, short as was his sojourn there, he left behind him such honorable memories that his ‘alma mater’ is now only too proud to enrol his name among her most respected sons.  Poe’s adopted father, however, did not regard his ‘protege’s’ collegiate career with equal pleasure:  whatever view he may have entertained of the lad’s scholastic successes, he resolutely refused to discharge the gambling debts which, like too many of his classmates, he had incurred.  A violent altercation took place between Mr. Allan and the youth, and Poe hastily quitted the shelter of home to try and make his way in the world alone.

Taking with him such poems as he had ready, Poe made his way to Boston, and there looked up some of his mother’s old theatrical friends.  Whether he thought of adopting the stage as a profession, or whether he thought of getting their assistance towards helping him to put a drama of his own upon the stage,—­that dream of all young authors,—­is now unknown.  He appears to have wandered about for some time, and by some means or the other succeeded in getting a little volume of poems printed “for private circulation only.”  This was towards the end of 1827, when he was nearing nineteen.  Doubtless Poe expected to dispose of his volume by subscription among his friends, but copies did not go off, and ultimately the book was suppressed, and the remainder of the edition, for “reasons of a private nature,” destroyed.

What happened to the young poet, and how he contrived to exist for the next year or so, is a mystery still unsolved.  It has always been believed that he found his way to Europe and met with some curious adventures there, and Poe himself certainly alleged that such was the case.  Numbers of mythical stories have been invented to account for this chasm in the poet’s life, and most of them self-evidently fabulous.  In a recent biography of Poe an attempt had been made to prove that he enlisted in the army under an assumed name, and served for about eighteen months in the artillery in a highly creditable manner, receiving an honorable discharge at the instance of Mr. Allan.  This account is plausible, but will need further explanation of its many discrepancies of dates, and verification of the different documents cited in proof of it, before the public can receive it as fact.  So many fables have been published about Poe, and even many fictitious documents quoted, that it behoves the unprejudiced to be wary in accepting any new statements concerning him that are not thoroughly authenticated.

On the 28th February, 1829, Mrs. Allan died, and with her death the final thread that had bound Poe to her husband was broken.  The adopted son arrived too late to take a last farewell of her whose influence had given the Allan residence its only claim upon the poet’s heart.  A kind of truce was patched up over the grave of the deceased lady, but, for the future, Poe found that home was home no longer.