"I am drawn to you by your defense of Edgar A. Poe. I love him, though I met him but once. It was in September, 1845. I was sitting on a pile watching our bark that was moored to the pile. A quiet, neatly-dressed gentleman came up to me and asked me numberless questions in regard to our seafaring life. He was so lovable in his conversation that I never forgot him, and I prize the memory of those few hours of his sweet talk with me and hold it sacred to his memory. He could not have been a drinking man, for his looks did not show it. On my telling that I was a runaway boy from Kentucky, he took some scraps of paper from his pocket and took notes, saying that he could make a nice story of what I had told him. I took him aboard the bark and showed him a pet monkey I had brought from Natal. He ate a piece of biscuit and drank some cold coffee, and said he would come again and see me and get acquainted with my captain. This was years ago, and I am now an old man, seventy-three years old, but I can remember, word for word, all that passed." CHAPTER XXV. WITH OLD FRIENDS. It must be admitted that Poe, after his affair with Mrs. Osgood and the severe illness which followed, was never again what he had been. With health and spirits impaired, his intellect had in a great measure lost its brilliant creative power--its inspirations, as we may call it--and thenceforth his writings were no longer the spontaneous and irrepressible impulse of genius, but the product of mental effort and labor. In special had his poetic talent in a measure deserted him, as is evident in his latest poems, with one or two exceptions. Recognizing this condition--and with what a pang we may imagine--he recalled Mrs. Shew's advice in regard to a second marriage, and, admitting its wisdom, began to look about for a suitable matrimonial partner. Finally his choice fell upon Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, of Providence, Rhode Island, one of the "poetesses" of the time, and the most brilliant of them all. A consideration which doubtless chiefly influenced him in this choice was that Mrs. Whitman, being a lady of literary taste and independent means, would be likely to take an interest in the _Stylus_, the hope of establishing which he had never abandoned, and would assist him in carrying out his plans in regard to it. Of Mrs. Whitman, at this time about forty-five years of age, I have the following account from a lady--Mrs. F. H. Kellogg--whose mother was an intimate friend and near neighbor of hers in Providence: