In October following the return of the Poes to New York--October of the year 1844--Mr. Nathaniel P. Willis who was then editor of _The Evening Mirror_, and had been editor of _The Dollar Magazine_, when it awarded the prize of a hundred dollars to "The Gold Bug," was seated at his desk in the "Mirror" office, when in response to his "Come in," a stranger appeared in his doorway--a woman--a lady in the best sense of a word almost become obsolete. A _gentlewoman_ describes her best of all. She was a gentlewoman, then, past middle age, yet beautiful with the high type of beauty that only ripe years, beautifully lived, can bring--the beauty that compensates for the fading of the rose on cheek and lip, the dimming of the light in the eyes, for the frost on the brow--the beauty of patience, of tenderness, of faith unquenchable by fire or flood of adversity. A history was written on the face--a history in which there was plainly much of tragedy. Yet not one bitter line was there. It was a face, withal, which could only have belonged to a mother, and might well have belonged to the mother, Niobe. In figure she was tall and stately, with a gentle dignity. Her dress was simple to plainness, and might have been called shabby had it been less beautifully neat. It was of unrelieved black, and she wore a conventional widow's bonnet, with floating white strings. The reader needs no introduction to this stranger to Mr. Willis, who in a gentle, well-bred voice, with a certain mournful cadence in it, announced herself as "Mrs. Clemm--the mother-in-law of Mr. Poe." No connection with a famous author was needed to inspire Mr. Willis with respect for his visitor. She seemed to him to be an "angel upon earth," and it was with an air approaching reverence that he handed her to the most comfortable chair the office afforded. Her errand was quickly made known. Edgar Poe was ill and not able to come out himself. His wife was an invalid, and so it devolved upon her to seek employment for him. In spite of his fame, she said, and of his industry, his manuscripts brought him so little money that he was in need of the necessities of life. Regular work with a regular income, however small, she felt to be his only hope of being able to rise above want. Mr. Willis was distressed and promptly offered all he could. It was not much, but it was better than nothing--it was the place of assistant editor of his paper. For months following, the figure of Edgar Poe was a familiar one in the office of the _Evening Mirror_. Neither in his character of Edgar the Dreamer nor that of Edgar Goodfellow was he especially known there, but simply as a modest, industrious sub-editor, doing the work of a mechanical paragraphist as quietly, as unobtrusively, as a machine. With rarely a smile and rarely a word, he stood from morning till night at his desk in a corner of the editorial room--pale, still and beautiful as a statue, punctual and efficient and the embodiment of courtesy always.