The reader needs no introduction to this stranger to Mr. Willis, who in a gentle, well-bred voice, with a certain mournful cadence in it, announced herself as “Mrs. Clemm—­the mother-in-law of Mr. Poe.”

No connection with a famous author was needed to inspire Mr. Willis with respect for his visitor.  She seemed to him to be an “angel upon earth,” and it was with an air approaching reverence that he handed her to the most comfortable chair the office afforded.

Her errand was quickly made known.  Edgar Poe was ill and not able to come out himself.  His wife was an invalid, and so it devolved upon her to seek employment for him.  In spite of his fame, she said, and of his industry, his manuscripts brought him so little money that he was in need of the necessities of life.  Regular work with a regular income, however small, she felt to be his only hope of being able to rise above want.

Mr. Willis was distressed and promptly offered all he could.  It was not much, but it was better than nothing—­it was the place of assistant editor of his paper.

For months following, the figure of Edgar Poe was a familiar one in the office of the Evening Mirror.  Neither in his character of Edgar the Dreamer nor that of Edgar Goodfellow was he especially known there, but simply as a modest, industrious sub-editor, doing the work of a mechanical paragraphist as quietly, as unobtrusively, as a machine.  With rarely a smile and rarely a word, he stood from morning till night at his desk in a corner of the editorial room—­pale, still and beautiful as a statue, punctual and efficient and the embodiment of courtesy always.

And quietly and unobtrusively his personality made itself felt.  Mr. Willis came to love him for his innate charm and for his faithfulness to duty.

* * * * *

But the desk of a sub-editor could not long hold a genius like Edgar Poe.  He bore its drudgery without complaint, but when an opening that seemed to invite his ambition, as well as to promise better pay came, he hailed it with enthusiasm.  In March of the next year he formed a partnership with two New York journalists, as editors and managers of The Broadway Journal.  A few months later saw him sole proprietor as well as editor, and for a short, bright period his old dream of a magazine of his own, in which he could write as he pleased, came true.  Its realization seemed to inspire him with new energy.  How many heads, how many right hands had the man—­his readers asked each other—­that he could turn out such a mass of work of such high order?  His own and many other of the magazines of the day were filled with reviews and criticisms that made him the terror of other writers, and with stories and poems that made him the marvel of readers everywhere.

His works were translated into the tongues of France, Germany and Spain, and his fame grew in all of those countries.