is never importunate.  His simplicity is that of elegance, not of poverty.  The quiet unconcern with which he says his best things is peculiar to him among English poets, though Goldsmith, Addison, and Thackeray, have approached it in prose.  He prattles inadvertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the story, lets fall a pearl at every other word.  It is such a piece of good luck to be natural.  It is the good gift which the fairy god-mother brings to her prime favorites in the cradle.  If not genius, it is alone what makes genius amiable in the arts.  If a man have it not he will never find it; for when it is sought it is gone.

* * * * *

=_Edgar Allen Poe, 1811-1849._= (Manual, p. 510.)

From “The Masque of the Red Death.”

=_221._= CHIMING OF THE CLOCK.

...  The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue.  But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations.  The panes here were scarlet—­a deep blood color.  Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro, or depended from the roof.  There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers.  But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room.  And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances.  But in the western or black chamber, the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony.  Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep, and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows, as if in confused revery or meditation.  But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the