“He loved all shadowy spots, all seasons drear; All ways of darkness lured his ghastly whim; Strange fellowships he held with goblins grim, At whose demoniac eyes he felt no fear. By desolate paths of dream where fancy’s owl Sent long lugubrious hoots through sombre air, Amid thought’s gloomiest caves he went to prowl And met delirium in her awful lair.” Edgar Poe was born in Boston February 19th, 1809. His father was a Marylander, as was also his grandfather, who was a distinguished Revolutionary soldier and a friend of General Lafayette. The parents of Poe were both actors who toured the country in the ordinary manner, and this perhaps accounts for his birth in Boston. Their home was in Baltimore, Maryland. When Poe was only a few years old both parents died, within two weeks, in Richmond, Virginia. Their three children, two daughters, one older and one younger than the subject of this sketch, were all adopted by friends of the family. Mr. John Allen, a rich tobacco merchant of Richmond, Virginia, adopted Edgar (who was henceforth called Edgar Allen Poe), and had him carefully educated, first in England, afterwards at the Richmond Academy and the University of Virginia, and subsequently at West Point. He always distinguished himself in his studies, but from West Point he was dismissed after one year, it is said because he refused to submit to the discipline of the institution. In common with the custom in the University of Virginia at that time, Poe acquired the habits of drinking and gambling, and the gambling debts which he contracted incensed Mr. Allen, who refused to pay them. This brought on the beginning of a series of quarrels which finally led to Poe’s disinheritance and permanent separation from his benefactor. Thus turned out upon the cold, unsympathetic world, without business training, without friends, without money, knowing not how to make money――yet, with a proud, imperious, aristocratic nature,――we have the beginning of the saddest story of any life in literature――struggling for nearly twenty years in gloom and poverty, with here and there a ray of sunshine, and closing with delirium tremens in Baltimore, October 7th, 1849, at forty years of age.