complexion, and chestnut ringlets framing a prominent, white brow and
tumbling over a broad, snowy tucker. He wore pongee knickerbockers and
red silk stockings and on his curls jauntily rested a peaked velvet cap
from which a heavy gold tassel fell over upon his shoulder.

The denizens of old Stoke-Newington gazed upon this prosperous trio with
frank curiosity; the reader has already recognized John Allan and his
wife, Frances, and little Edgar Poe--their adopted child.

The sun was still hot, and the refreshing chill in the dusky street,
under its arch of interlacing boughs, was grateful to the tired little
traveller. As he moved along, clinging to Mrs. Allan's hand, his big
eyes gazing as far as they might up the long, cool aisle the trees made,
the hazy green distance invited his mystery-loving fancy. The odors of a
thousand flowering shrubberies were on the air and he felt that it was
good to be in this dreaming old town--as old, it seemed to him, as the
world; and there was born in him at that moment, though he could not
have defined it, a sense of the picturesquesness, the charm, the
fragrance, of old things--old streets, old houses, old trees, old turf
and shrubberies, even--with their haunting suggestions of bygone days
and scenes.

They passed the ancient Gothic church, standing solemn and serene among
its mossy tombs. In the misty blue atmosphere above the elms the fretted
steeple seemed to the boy to lie imbedded and asleep, but even as he
gazed upon it the churchbell, sounding the hour, broke the stillness
with a deep, hollow roar which thrilled him with mingled awe and
delight.

Ah, here indeed, was a place made for dreaming!