For once Mr. Graham was disposed to question his opinion.

“I don’t know about that,” he said.  “The poem has a certain power, it seems to me.  It might repel—­it might fascinate.  I should like to buy it just to give the poor fellow a little lift.  The lovely eyes of that fragile wife of his haunt me.”

It was finally decided to let Mr. Poe read the poem to the office force, and take the vote upon it.

They were all drawn up in a semi-circle, even the small office boy, who sat with solemn eyes and mouth open and who felt the importance of being called upon to sit in judgment upon a “piece of poetry.”  Edgar Poe stood opposite them and for the second time recited his new poem—­then withdrew while the vote was taken.

Dr. Griswold was the first to cast his vote and at once emphatically pronounced his “No!”

The rest agreed with him that the poem was “too queer,” but as a solace for the poet’s disappointment some one passed around a hat and the next day a hamper of delicacies was sent to Mrs. Poe, with the “compliments of the staff at Grahams.”

Albeit “The Raven” was rejected by Graham’s Magazine and others, enough of Edgar Poe’s work was bought and published to keep his name and fame before the public—­just enough (poorly paid as it was) to keep the souls of himself and his wife and his “more than mother,” within their bodies.

And though Mr. Graham would none of “The Raven,” he paid its author fifty-two dollars for a new story—­“The Gold Bug.”  This sum seemed a small fortune to The Dreamer at the time, but he was to do better than that with his story. The Dollar Magazine of New York offered a prize of one hundred dollars for the best short story submitted to it.  Poe had nothing by him but some critical essays, but remembering his early success in Baltimore with “The MS. Found in a Bottle,” he was anxious to try.  So he hastened with the critiques to Graham’s and offered them in place of the story.

Mr. Graham agreed to the exchange and “The Gold Bug” was promptly dispatched to New York, where it was awarded the prize.

When it was published in The Dollar Magazine it made a great noise in the world and a red-letter day in the life of Edgar Poe.

* * * * *

The hundred dollars brought indeed, a season of comfort and cheer in the midst of the hardest times the cottage in Spring Garden had known.  But the last penny was finally spent.

Winter came on—­the winter of 1843.  It was a severe winter to the cottage.  The bow of promise that had spanned it seemed to have withdrawn to such a vast height above it that its outlines were indistinct—­its colors well nigh faded out.

The reading public still trumpeted the praise of Edgar the Dreamer—­his friends still believed in him—­from many quarters their letters and the letters of the great ones of the day fluttered to the cottage.  And not only letters came, but the literati of the day in person—­glad to sit at Edgar Poe’s feet, their hearts glowing with the eloquence of his speech and aching as they recognized in the lovely eyes of the girl-wife “the light that beckons to the tomb.”