“And whose ‘linked sweetness long drawn out’ is that?” asked the visitor.

“Hear her!” cried Edgar Goodfellow who was in the ascendent for the first time in many a long day.  “Hear her!  Just as if her vain little heart didn’t tell her it’s herself!”

But the moment of playfulness was a rarity, and all the more enjoyed for that.

The papers came out in due course, serially, and created a new sensation and brought their little reward, but they also plunged their author into a succession of unsavory quarrels.  As each one appeared, it was looked for with eagerness and read with intense interest by the public, but frequently with as intense anger by the subject.

Perhaps the most caustic of all the critiques was the one upon the work of Mr. Thomas Dunn English, whom Poe contemptuously dubbed, “Thomas Done Brown.”

Mr. English bitterly retorted with an attack upon his critic’s private character.  A fierce controversy followed in which English became so abusive that Poe sued and recovered two hundred and twenty-five dollars damages—­which goes to prove that even an ill wind can blow good.

Long after the papers had been published the scene of playful idleness, with all its holiday charm, when Edgar Poe drew out the strips of manuscript in which were rolled up “The Literati of New York” remained in Mrs. Osgood’s memory, and in his own.  To him it was indeed a gleam of brightness amid a throng of “earnest woes,” a season of calm in a “tumultous sea.”

But, as been said, why dwell upon the details of that bleak, despairing winter?  Spring brought a change which makes a more pleasant picture.

* * * * *

Ever since they had left Philadelphia the Poes had clung, in memory, to the rose-embowered cottage in Spring Garden.  There, they told each other, they had a home to their minds.  It was the dear “Muddie,” their ever faithful earthly Providence to whom they were already so deeply indebted, who discovered in the suburb of Fordham, a tiny cottage which had much of the charm of which they dreamed—­even to the infinitesimal price for which it could be rented.

It was only a story and a half high, but there was a commodious and cheerful room down stairs, with four windows, and from the narrow hallway a quaint little winding stair led to an attic which though its roof was low and sloping contained a room large enough to serve the double purpose of bed-chamber and study.

There was a pleasant porch across the front of the cottage which would make an ideal summer sitting-room and study, when the half-starved rose-bush upon it should have been nursed and trained to screen it from the sun.

The cottage stood upon a green hill, half-buried in cherry trees—­just then in full bloom and filled with bird-song.  Nearby was a grove of pines and a short walk away was the Harlem River, with its picturesque, high, stone bridge.  It was an abode fit to be in Paradise, Edgar told Virginia and the Mother, and within a few days they and their few small possessions—­including Catalina—­were as well established there as if they had never known any other home.