"Your invitation to dinner has wounded me to the quick. I cannot come for reasons of the most humiliating nature--my personal appearance. You may imagine my mortification in making this disclosure to you, but it is necessary." As he was about, in bitterness of soul, to add his signature a sudden thought caused him to pause, pen poised in air. A thought?--A temptation would perhaps be a better word. It bade him consider carefully before throwing away his chance. Who knew, who could tell, it questioned, how much might depend upon this meeting? His fortune might be made by it! Almost certainly it would lead to the sale of some more of his stories to the _Visitor_. Mr. Kennedy believed that it would have this result--for this purpose he had arranged it. After taking so much pains for his benefit he would undoubtedly be disappointed--seriously disappointed--if his plan should fail. Mr. Kennedy had been so kind, so generous--doubtless he would gladly advance him a sum sufficient to make himself presentable for the dinner--to be paid by the first check received as a result of the meeting. A very modest sum would do. He might manage it, he thought, with twenty dollars. Finally, he drew his unfinished note before him again and added to what he had written, "If you will be my friend so far as to loan me twenty dollars, I will be with you tomorrow--otherwise it will be impossible, and I must submit to my fate. Sincerely yours, "E.A. POE." CHAPTER XX. The dinner went off charmingly. In addition to several journalists, Mr. Latrobe and Mr. Miller who, with Mr. Kennedy, had formed the committee that awarded the prize to Edgar Poe, were there and the meeting between the young guest of honor and his patrons engendered a spirit of _bon-homie_ that was palpable to all. Under its spell The Dreamer's spirits rose. Yet he was quiet, listening with deep attention to the conversation of his elders, but having little to say, until the repast was half over, when he responded to the evident desire of his host to draw him out. The conversation had turned upon a favorite theme of his--the power of words. He threw himself into it with zest, and with brilliant play of expression animating his splendid eyes and pale features, and the graceful, unrestrained gestures of one thoroughly at ease and entirely unconscious of self, he held the table spell-bound with a flow of sparkling talk in which his own exquisite choice of words delighted his hearers no less than the originality and beauty of his thought.