worshipped memory. It was with straightened shoulders and a high head
that he took the seat assigned him at the clumsy desk, in the bare, ugly
room of the school in which he was to be known for the first time as
_Edgar Poe_. He felt that in coming into his own name he had come into a
proud heritage.

Mr. Clarke's Irish heart warmed toward him. He divined in the
big-browed, big-eyed boy a unique and gifted personality and proceeded
with the uttermost tact to do his best toward the cultivation of his
talents. The result was that Edgar not only acquitted himself
brilliantly in his studies, but progressed well in his verse-making,
which though, since Mr. Allan's prohibition, it had been kept secret in
his home, was freely acknowledged to teacher and school-fellows.

By his class-mates he was deemed a wonder. He was so easily first among
them in everything--in the simple athletics with which they were
familiar, as well as in studies--and his talent for rhyming and drawing
seemed to set him upon a sort of pedestal.

In the first blush of triumph these little successes gave him, young
Edgar's head was in a fair way to be turned. He saw himself (in fancy)
the leader, the popular favorite of the whole school. Indeed, he
flattered himself he had leaped at a single bound to this position at
the moment, almost, of his entrance. But he soon began to see that he
was mistaken. While he was conscious of the unconcealed admiration of
most, and the ill-concealed envy of a few of the boys, of his mental and
physical abilities, he began, as time went on, to suspect--then to be
sure--that for some reason that baffled all his ingenuity to fathom, he
was not accorded the position in the school that was the natural reward
for superiority of endowment and performance. This place was filled