Edgar Poe had known sorrow, real and imaginary; he was now to have his first meeting with Disappointment, bitter and grim.

Of all the persons who had ever seen his work, every one had been warm in its praise—­everyone saving John Allan only.  Some had been positively glowing.  True, they had not been publishers, yet among them there had been gentlemen and ladies of taste and culture.  But here was a different matter.  Here was a personage with whom he had not reckoned, but who was the door, as it were, through which his work must pass into the world.  He was unmistakably a personage.  His bearing, though modest, spoke of power.  His dress, though unobtrusive, was in the perfect taste which only the prosperous can achieve and maintain.  His features were cast in the mold of the well-bred.  He was past middle age and his naturally fine countenance was beautiful with the ennobling lines which time leaves upon the face of the seeker after truth.  He was courteous—­most Bostonians and many publishers are.  He was sympathetic.  He was undoubtedly intellectual, but the eyes that regarded through big, gold-rimmed spectacles, the romantic beauty, the prominent brow and the distinguished air of the sweet-voiced youth before him, wore a not only thoughtful, but something more—­a distinctly shrewd and practical expression.  In them was no awe of the bare mention of “original poetry.”

He took the little rolls of manuscript into his strong, and at the same time smooth and well-shapen hands, and drew them out to their full length with the manner of one who handled as good every day.  He cast his eyes rapidly down the sheets—­too rapidly, it seemed to the poet—­with a not unkind, yet critical air, while the sensitive youth before him turned red and white, hot and cold, by turns, and learned something of the horrors of the Inquisition.

It was really but a very short space, but to the boy who seemed suspended between a life and a death sentence, it was an age.

Finally, he experienced something like a drowning sensation while he heard a voice that barely penetrated the flood of deep waters that was rolling over his head, saying words that were intended to be kind about the work showing promise, in spite of an absence of marketable value.

“Marketable value?” Heavens!  Was he back in John Allan’s counting house?  What could the man mean?  It was as literature, not as merchandize that he wanted his poetry to be judged!

In his dismay, he stammered something of the sort, only to be told that when his poetry was made into a book it would become merchandize and it mattered not how good, as poetry—­it might be, the publisher could do nothing with it unless as merchandize it would probably be valuable too.

Then—­he had been politely bowed out, with his package still under his arm!