attack of vomiting, and both lads were ill for several weeks.

Alluding to another quite famous swimming feat of his own, the poet
remarked, "Any 'swimmer in the falls' in my days would have swum the
Hellespont, and thought nothing of the matter. I swam from Ludlam's
Wharf to Warwick (six miles), in a hot June sun, against one of the
strongest tides ever known in the river. It would have been a feat
comparatively easy to swim twenty miles in still water. I would not
think much," Poe added in a strain of exaggeration not unusual with him,
"of attempting to swim the British Channel from Dover to Calais."
Colonel Mayo, who had tried to accompany him in this performance, had to
stop on the way, and says that Poe, when he reached the goal, emerged
from the water with neck, face, and back blistered. The facts of this
feat, which was undertaken for a wager, having been questioned, Poe,
ever intolerant of contradiction, obtained and published the affidavits
of several gentlemen who had witnessed it. They also certified that Poe
did not seem at all fatigued, and that he walked back to Richmond
immediately after the performance.

The poet is generally remembered at this part of his career to have been
slight in figure and person, but to have been well made, active, sinewy,
and graceful. Despite the fact that he was thus noted among his
schoolfellows and indulged at home, he does not appear to have been in
sympathy with his surroundings. Already dowered with the "hate of hate,
the scorn of scorn," he appears to have made foes both among those who
envied him and those whom, in the pride of intellectuality, he treated
with pugnacious contempt. Beneath the haughty exterior, however, was a
warm and passionate heart, which only needed circumstance to call forth
an almost fanatical intensity of affection. A well-authenticated
instance of this is thus related by Mrs. Whitman: