which was only straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The
weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that
accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed,
wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in
her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness.
The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as
her husband held her hands, and her mother her feet." She died January
30, 1847.

After this event Poe was never entirely himself again. The immediate
effect of his bereavement was complete physical and mental prostration,
from which he recovered only with difficulty. His subsequent literary
work deserves scarcely more than mere mention. His _Eureka_, an
ambitious treatise, the immortality of which he confidently predicted,
was a disappointment and failure. He tried lecturing, but with only
moderate success. His correspondence at this time reveals a broken,
hysterical, hopeless man. In his weakness, loneliness, and sorrow, he
resorted to stimulants with increasing frequency. Their terrible work was
soon done. On his return from a visit to Richmond, he stopped in
Baltimore, where he died from the effects of drinking, October 7, 1849.

Thus ended the tragedy of his life. It is as depressing as one of his own
morbid, fantastic tales. His career leaves a painful sense of
incompleteness and loss. With greater self-discipline, how much more he
might have accomplished for himself and for others! Gifted, self-willed,
proud, passionate, with meager moral sense, he forfeited success by his
perversity and his vices. From his own character and experience he drew
the unhealthy and pessimistic views to which he has given expression in
the maddening poem, _The Conqueror Worm_. And if there were not
happier and nobler lives, we might well say with him, as we stand by his