The love of Poe began early with me. My father had been a friend of the poet’s in Philadelphia, and a member of the Poe circle during the forties of the last century; “roaring forties”, indeed. That prime old comedian, Billy Burton, the ideal Falstaff of his day; John Sartain, the engraver, and father of William Sartain, the painter; Judge Conrad, who could move his listeners to tears when he recited the Lord’s Prayer; the elder Booth, a noble tragedian much given to drink; Graham, the publisher, and several others whose names have escaped my memory, composed this interesting group. In his memoirs John Sartain has written of Poe and of a certain wild midnight walk in Fairmount Park. I remember the elder Sartain as an infrequent visitor at our house, and I also remember how I hung on his words when he spoke of Poe. My father told me that Poe would become a raving maniac after a thimbleful of brandy, so sensitive was his cerebral mechanism. But other authorities contradict this theory. Poe had been often seen to toss off a tumblerful of cognac neat. Last year at Atlantic City I met Mr. Hutzler, a well-known merchant of Baltimore, a spry young octogenarian and a seasoned raconteur. He told me, and in a vivid manner, of seeing Edgar Poe and Junius Brutus Booth hanging on to the same lamp-post, both helplessly drunk at midday. This happened about 1845, as the boys, Mr. Hutzler among the rest, trooped out to dinner from the public school on Holliday Street. Mr. Hutzler’s memory has a mirror-like clearness, and he described the occurrence as if it had happened yesterday. Like irreverent school-boys, they surrounded the greatest living Shakespearean actor and the greatest American poet and mocked at them. We lived on North Seventh Street, and twice a day, on my trip to and from school, I passed the house where Poe had lived during his sojourn in Philadelphia, from 1838 to 1844. That house I should not have been able to locate to-day if my friend, Christopher Morley (charming writer, with a name that recalls spacious Elizabethan times: Kit Morley!), hadn’t described it. This house, in which Poe wrote The Raven and The Gold Bug, is at the northwest corner of Seventh and Brandywine Streets. Another critic friend, Albert Mordell, assures me that the old pear-tree in the back yard still bears fruit for the present resident, Mrs. Owens. The house is the rear building of another numbered 530 North Seventh Street. Mr. Mordell sent me a photograph which shows a typical Philadelphia red brick structure with white shutters and marble steps. I have heard of many spots where Poe wrote The Raven, Fordham among the rest, but as boys we told ourselves when we stared at the old building: “Poe wrote his Raven and Gold Bug there!” It is something to remember in these piping times of hypocrisy and universal hatred of art, music, and literature.