And quietly and unobtrusively his personality made itself felt. Mr. Willis came to love him for his innate charm and for his faithfulness to duty. * * * * * But the desk of a sub-editor could not long hold a genius like Edgar Poe. He bore its drudgery without complaint, but when an opening that seemed to invite his ambition, as well as to promise better pay came, he hailed it with enthusiasm. In March of the next year he formed a partnership with two New York journalists, as editors and managers of _The Broadway Journal_. A few months later saw him sole proprietor as well as editor, and for a short, bright period his old dream of a magazine of his own, in which he could write as he pleased, came true. Its realization seemed to inspire him with new energy. How many heads, how many right hands had the man--his readers asked each other--that he could turn out such a mass of work of such high order? His own and many other of the magazines of the day were filled with reviews and criticisms that made him the terror of other writers, and with stories and poems that made him the marvel of readers everywhere. His works were translated into the tongues of France, Germany and Spain, and his fame grew in all of those countries. Yet the most that he could afford in the way of a home was up two flights of stairs--two rooms in the third story of a dingy old house in East Broadway. Mother Clemm and Virginia kept them bright and spotless and "Catalina" dosing on the hearth gave a final touch of comfort, and they were far above the noise and dust of the streets, with windows opening upon a goodly view of the sky. They had a front and a back room, so that the beauties of the dawn and the noontide--of sunset and moonrise--were all theirs. And the Wolf came not near the door, and the three whose natures were like to the natures of the oak, the vine and the heartsease, and who lived for each other only, dreamed again the dream of the wonderful valley--the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. CHAPTER XXIX. Up, up the stairs, two steps at a time, sprang The Dreamer, one white January day, and burst in upon Mother Clemm who was preparing dinner, and Virginia who was mending his coat. He was in a great glee. He caught "Muddie" in his arms where she stood with her hands deep in a tray of dough, and kissed her, then stooped over Virginia and kissed _her_, and dropped into her lap a crisp ten dollar bank note. She gave a little scream of delight. "Where did you get it?" she cried? "From Willis. I've sold him 'The Raven.' He's vastly taken with it and not only paid me the ten, in advance, but will give the poem an editorial puff in the _Mirror_ of the nineteenth. He showed me a rough draft. He will say that it is 'the most effective example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country,' and predict that it will 'stick in the memory of everybody who reads it!'"