The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 3Poe, Edgar Allan
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The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 3
Poe, Edgar Allan
American fiction -- 19th century; Fantasy fiction; Horror tales, American
“You will perceive,” said Templeton, “the date of this picture—it
is here, scarcely visible, in this corner—1780. In this year was
the portrait taken. It is the likeness of a dead friend—a Mr.
Oldeb—to whom I became much attached at Calcutta, during the
administration of Warren Hastings. I was then only twenty years
old. When I first saw you, Mr. Bedloe, at Saratoga, it was the
miraculous similarity which existed between yourself and the
painting which induced me to accost you, to seek your friendship,
and to bring about those arrangements which resulted in my
becoming your constant companion. In accomplishing this point, I
was urged partly, and perhaps principally, by a regretful memory
of the deceased, but also, in part, by an uneasy, and not
altogether horrorless curiosity respecting yourself.
“In your detail of the vision which presented itself to you amid
the hills, you have described, with the minutest accuracy, the
Indian city of Benares, upon the Holy River. The riots, the
combat, the massacre, were the actual events of the insurrection
of Cheyte Sing, which took place in 1780, when Hastings was put
in imminent peril of his life. The man escaping by the string of
turbans was Cheyte Sing himself. The party in the kiosk were
sepoys and British officers, headed by Hastings. Of this party I
was one, and did all I could to prevent the rash and fatal sally
of the officer who fell, in the crowded alleys, by the poisoned
arrow of a Bengalee. That officer was my dearest friend. It was
Oldeb. You will perceive by these manuscripts,” (here the speaker
produced a note-book in which several pages appeared to have been
freshly written,) “that at the very period in which you fancied
these things amid the hills, I was engaged in detailing them upon
paper here at home.”
In about a week after this conversation, the following paragraphs
appeared in a Charlottesville paper:
“We have the painful duty of announcing the death of Mr. Augustus
Bedlo, a gentleman whose amiable manners and many virtues have
long endeared him to the citizens of Charlottesville.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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