What he did not have was experience and knowledge of the world.  Little did he dream how small a part of the busy hive would turn aside to hear his music or how little poetry had to do with the earning of daily bread.

His trunk was standing open, half packed, though his destination was still undecided; and among the first things that had gone into it was a box containing a number of small rolls of neat manuscript.  As he thought of them his heart warmed and his eyes grew soft.

“The world’s mine oyster, and with my good pen I’ll open it,” he joyously paraphrased.  But toward what part of the world should he turn his face—­to what market take his precious wares?  That was the all-important question!  How much his fortune might depend upon his decision!

As he stood at the window, he stared into the brilliancy and the shadows of the icy, unresponsive night—­seeking a sign.  But the cold splendor of the cloudless sky and glittering moon and the inscrutible shadows in the garden below where the leafless trees and bushes cast monster shapes upon the frozen ground, alike mocked him.

Presently there was the first hint of softness in the night.  It came like a sigh of tender pity across the stillness and he bent his head to listen.  It was the voice of the faintest of breezes blowing up from the south and passing his window.  He threw wide his arms to empty space as if to embrace some invisible form.

“Ligeia, Ligeia, my beautiful one,” he breathed, invoking his dream-lady, “Be my counsellor and guide!  Let thy sweet voice whisper whither I must go!”

But the voice was silent and all the night was still again.

He turned from the window and threw himself into his arm-chair, letting his eyes rove about the room as though he would seek a sign from its walls.  Suddenly he sat erect, his dilated pupils fixed upon a point above the chimney-piece—­upon a small picture.  It was a little water-color sketch done by the hand of his versatile mother, and found among her belongings after her death.  Like her miniature and her letters, the picture had followed him through his life and had always adorned the walls of his room.  Often and over he had studied it until he knew by heart every stroke of the brush that entered into its composition.  Yet he stared at it now as if he had never seen it before.  Finally he took it down from its place on the chimney and held it in his hands, gazing upon it in deep abstraction.

Underneath the picture was written its title:  “Boston Harbor—­Morning,” and upon its back,

“For my little boy, Edgar, who must love Boston, the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends.”

The picture gave him the sign!  With rising excitement he decided that it must be accepted.  To Boston, of course, he would go.  Boston, the place of his birth and where his angel mother had found her “best, most sympathetic friends.”