Poe was of all men one who most craved and needed the love and sympathy of a woman of a nature kindred to his own--a woman of talent and qualities of mind and heart to appreciate his genius and all that was best in him; one who would be to him not only a congenial companion, but a "helpmeet" as well. Had he married one of Mrs. Osgood's tender sensibilities and feminine charm, or Mrs. Whitman, with her talent and strong character, or even a woman of the practical good sense and judgment of Mrs. Shew, who knew so well how to care for him mentally and physically--Poe would have been a different man. But his imprudent and, as it has been called, unnatural marriage, cut him off from what would probably have been the highest happiness of his life, with its accompanying worldly and social advantages, and bound him down to a life of unceasing toil, penury and helplessness. It deprived him of a social position and social enjoyment; for his poverty-stricken "home" was never one to which he could invite his friends; and he himself seems never to have found in it any real pleasure, but to have regarded it merely as a haven of refuge in seasons of distress. But as the years went by and, despite his incessant toil, his life and his home grew more cheerless and poverty-stricken, he became hopeless and in a measure reckless. It is to be noted that it was only after the death of his wife that he appeared to recover anything like hope or energy. Then his prospects suddenly brightened in the love of a good and talented woman who could have made his life happy and prosperous, when, owing to his miserable weakness of will in yielding to temptation, for which there was no excuse, it was all at once swept from his grasp. Mr. John Mackenzie might well have said, as he did, that Poe's marriage was the greatest misfortune of his life and as a millstone around his neck, holding him down against every effort to rise. But perhaps not even this close friend knew how keenly the poet must have felt the narrowness of his life, the sordidness of his home, and the humiliation of his poverty. Patiently and uncomplainingly he bore his unhappy lot; and it is to be noted to his credit that howsoever he might at times go astray, no word or act of unkindness toward the wife and mother who loved him was ever known to escape from him.