LITERARY HEARTHSTONES OF DIXIE




"THE POET OF THE NIGHT"

EDGAR ALLAN POE


"I am a Virginian; at least, I call myself one, for I have resided all
my life until within the last few years in Richmond."

Thus Edgar A. Poe wrote to a friend. The fact of his birth in Boston
he regarded as merely an unfortunate accident, or perhaps the work of
that malevolent "Imp of the Perverse" which apparently dominated his
life. That it constituted any tie between him and the "Hub of the
Universe," unless it might be the inverted tie of opposition, he never
admitted. The love which his charming little actress mother cherished
for the city in which she had enjoyed her greatest triumphs seemed to
have turned to hatred in the heart of her brilliant and erratic son.
In his short and disastrous sojourn in Boston, when his fortunes were
at their lowest ebb, it is not likely that his thought once turned to
the old house on Haskins, now Carver, Street, where his ill-starred
life began.

The reason given by Poe, "I have resided there all my life until
within the last few years," suggests but slight cause for his love of