With trembling hands the discouraged young applicant for place as an author made a neat parcel of six of his “Tales of the Folio Club” and a recently written poem, “The Coliseum,” and left them, that very night, at the door of the office of The Saturday Visitor.

How eagerly he and “Muddie” and “Sissy” awaited the fateful twelfth!  The hours and the days dragged by on leaden wings.  But the twelfth came at last.  It found Edgar Poe at the office of the Visitor an hour before time for the paper to be issued, but at length he held the scarcely dry sheet in his hand and there, with his name at the end, was the story that had taken the prize—­“The MS. Found in a Bottle.”

More!—­In the following wonderful—­most wonderful words, it seemed to him—­the judges declared their decision: 

“Among the prose articles were many of various and distinguished merit, but the singular force and beauty of those sent by the author of ‘Tales of the Folio Club’ leave us no room for hesitation in that department.  We have awarded the premium to a tale entitled, ‘The MS. Found in a Bottle.’  It would hardly be doing justice to the writer of this collection to say that the tale we have chosen is the best of the six offered by him.  We cannot refrain from saying that the author owes it to his own reputation as well as to the gratification of the community to publish the entire volume.  These tales are eminently distinguished by a wild, vigorous and poetical imagination, a rich style, a fertile invention and varied, curious learning.

(Signed) “JOHN P. KENNEDY, J.H.B.  LATROBE, JAMES H. MILLER, Committee.”

Here was the fulfilment of hope long deferred!  Here was a brimming cup of joy which the widowed aunt and little cousin who had taken him in and made him a son and brother could share with him!  It seemed almost too good to be true, yet there it was in plain black and white with the signatures of the three gentlemen whose opinion everyone would respect, at the end.  What wealth that hundred dollars—­the first earnings of his pen—­seemed.  What comforts for the modest home it would buy!  This was no mere nod of recognition from the literary world, but a cordial hand-clasp, drawing him safely within that magic, but hitherto frowning portal.

He felt as if he were walking on air as he hurried home to tell “Muddie” and “Sissy” of his and their good fortune.  And how proud “Muddie” was of her boy!  How lovingly little “Sissy” hung on his neck and gave him kisses of congratulation—­though but little realizing the significance of his success.  And how he, in turn, beamed upon them!  The grey eyes had lost all of their melancholy and seemed suddenly to have become wells of sunshine.  In imagination he pictured these loved ones raised forever from want, for he told himself that he would not only sell for a goodly price all the rest of the “Tales of the Folio Club,” but under the happy influence of his success he would write many more and far better stories still, to be promptly exchanged for gold.