Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat-- Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others, she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proud! We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die! Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us--they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! [Sidenote: Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico"] [Sidenote: Edgar Allan Poe] [Sidenote: "The Gold Bug"] America this year lost three of her prominent literary men by the deaths of Allston, the poet and painter, Noah Webster, the lexicographer, and Key, the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The historian Prescott now brought out his great "Conquest of Mexico." Longfellow published his "Spanish Student." Edgar Allan Poe entered upon his new journalistic venture "The Stylus." For this he wrote his stories of "The Tell-Tale Heart," "Leonore," and his "Notes upon English Verse." For other publications he wrote "The Pit and the Pendulum," and the striking poem, "The Conqueror Worm." His fearful tale of the "Black Cat" was published in the "Saturday Evening Post." At this time he was ailing in health, while his young wife, Virginia, was dying. During these trying months his principal income was a hundred dollar prize received for his famous story of "The Gold Bug," published in the "Dollar Newspaper." The judges confessed later that they awarded the prize to this contribution largely on account of its neat handwriting. [Sidenote: Oregon controversy] [Sidenote: Texas unannexed] On June 17, the new Bunker Hill Monument of Boston was dedicated amid impressive ceremonies. Daniel Webster, who as a young man had spoken there when the cornerstone was laid by Lafayette, was once more the orator of the day. In the South, Jefferson Davis began his political career as a member of the Mississippi Convention, as did Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, who was then elected to Congress. The pending negotiations with Great Britain concerning the possession of Oregon were made more momentous by the exodus of some thousand American emigrants from Missouri, on an overland journey to distant Oregon. The first session of the Thirty-eighth Congress, in December, showed a Democratic majority in the House of sixty-nine votes. Under the Whig regime, the policy of a great navy had been developed. A bill for a large increase in ships was passed. Tyler's last message recommended the annexation of Texas, for which a treaty was pending. It was voted down in the Senate by a two-thirds vote.