One evening, quite late, an alarm of fire was raised, and all the young men of Duncan Lodge, accompanied by Poe, hastened to the scene of disaster, about a mile further in the country. Finding a great crowd collected, and that their services were not required, they sat on a fence looking on, and it was past midnight when they thought of returning home. Gay young Dr. "Tom" Mackenzie remarked that it would never do to return in their immaculate white linen suits, as they would be sure to get a "wigging" from the old ladies for not having helped to put out the fire, and, besides, they were all hungry, and he knew how they could get a good supper. With that he seized a piece of charred wood and commenced besmirching their white garments and their hands and faces, including Poe's. Arriving at home in an apparently exhausted condition, they were treated by Mrs. Mackenzie herself, who would not disturb her servants, to the best that the pantry afforded, nor was the trick discovered until the following day. Mrs. Mackenzie laughed, but from Mrs. Carter, the mother of two of the culprits, and who was gifted with eloquence, they got the "wigging" which they had been anxious to avoid. And from accounts, Poe enjoyed it all immensely. A lady told me that one evening, going over to Duncan Lodge, her attention was attracted by the sound of voices in the garden, where she beheld all the young men in the broad central alley engaged in the classic game of "leapfrog." When it came to Mr. Poe's turn, she said, "he took a swift run and skimmed over their backs like a bird, seeming hardly to touch the ground. I never saw the like." Mr. Jones, Mrs. Mackenzie's son-in-law, who was rather large and heavy, came to grief in his performance, and no one laughed more heartily than did Poe. Was this the melancholy, morbid, "weird and wholly incomprehensible being" that the world has pictured the author of _The Raven_? Among these youthful spirits and his old friends, the depressing influences of his late life and home--the poverty, the friendlessness--seemed to vanish, and his real disposition reasserted itself. Pity that it could not have been always so. I am convinced that a great deal of Poe's unhappiness and apparent reserve and solitariness was owing to his obscure home life, which kept him apart from all genial social influences. At the North, wherever seen out of his business hours, he appears to have been "alone and solitary, proud and melancholy looking," says one, who had no idea of the loneliness of spirit, the lack of genial companionship, which made him so. With a few he was on friendly terms, but of intimate friends or associates he had not one so far as is known.