I did not feel particularly flattered by this proposal, knowing that since his coming to Richmond he had made a similar request of at least two other persons. However, I cleared the table of the fruit and the flowers and placed before him several sheets of generous foolscap, on which I had copied for a friend _The Raven_ as it was first published. He requested me to read it aloud, and as I did so, slowly and carefully, he sat, pencil in hand, ready to mark the difficult passages of which he had spoken. I paused at the third line. Had I not myself often noted the incongruity of representing the poet as pondering over _many_ a volume instead of a single one? I glanced inquiringly at Mr. Poe and, noting his unconscious look, proceeded. When I reached the line, "And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor;" he gave a slight shiver or shrug of the shoulders--an expressive motion habitual to him--and the pencil came down with an emphatic stroke beneath the six last words. This was one of the hardest knots, he said, nor could he find a way of getting over it. "_Ember_" was the only word rhyming with the two preceding lines, but in no way could he dispose of it except as he had done--thus producing the worst line in the poem. We "pondered" over it for awhile and finally gave it up. (But I may here mention that I have since, in studying the poem, made a discovery which, strangely enough, seems never to have occurred to the author. This was that in this particular stanza he had unconsciously reversed the order or arrangement of the lines, placing those of the triple rhymes first and the rhyming couplet last. Thus all his long years of worry over that unfortunate "_ember_" had been unnecessary, since the construction of the verse required not only the omission of the word as a rhyme, but of the whole line of "And each separate dying ember;" when the succeeding objectionable words, "Wrought its ghost upon the floor," could have been easily altered; and the addition of a third line to the succeeding couplet would have made the stanza correct.) Our next pause was at the word "_beast_," through which he ran his pencil. "Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above my chamber door." "I must get rid of that word," he said; "for, of course, no beast could be expected to occupy such a position." "Oh, yes; a mouse, for instance," I suggested, at which he gave me one of his rare humorous smiles. Leaving this point for future consideration, we passed on to a more serious difficulty. "This and more I sat divining, With my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet _lining_, with the lamplight gloated o'er."