"How dare you?" he screamed in the grating tones of angry old age. Then, grasping the cane at his side in trembling fingers and raising it with threatening gesture, he ordered his visitor to leave the room at once.
Edgar Poe stood aghast for a moment, then fled down the stair and out of the door and turning his back for the last time upon the house whose young master he had been, with the word "Nevermore" ringing like a knell in his ears, made his way again to the abode of love and peace in Baltimore, which held his whole heart and which had become his home.
A few weeks later Mr. Allan died, leaving the whole of his fortune to his second wife and her children.
It now became more important than ever for Edgar Poe to earn a living. In spite of the fact that Mr. Allan was known to have lost all regard for him, his friends had always believed that he would be remembered in the will. They believed that John Allan's rigid, sometimes even strained, idea of justice would cause him to provide for the boy for whom he had voluntarily, albeit against his own judgment, made himself responsible. The fact that the boy had turned out to be, in Mr. Allan's opinion, "trifling," that he refused to engage in any "useful" work and that at five and twenty years of age he had not established himself in any "paying business" would, those who knew Mr. Allan best believed, be with him but another reason for ensuring against want his first wife's spoiled darling who was evidently incapable of taking care of himself and therefore (so they believed he would argue) so much the more his care.
Possibly The Dreamer may have taken this view himself. However that may be, the opening of the will silenced all conjecture, and as has been said, made the need of his making his work produce money more pressing than ever. His friend Wilmer did his best for him—publishing his stories in The Saturday Visitor from time to time and paying him as well as he was able. But Wilmer and his paper were poor themselves. The Visitor was only a small weekly, with a modest subscription list. It had little to pay, however good the "copy" and that little and Mother Clemm's earnings put together barely kept the wolf from the door.
When the frequent and welcome summons to the bountiful board of the Kennedys came the young poet blushed for shame in the pleasure he could not help feeling in anticipation of the chance to satisfy his chastened appetite, and he often found himself fearing that the hunger with which he ate the good things which these kind friends placed upon his plate would betray the necessary frugality of the dear "Muddie's" house-keeping, which was one of the sacred secrets of the sweet home. Sometimes his pride would make him go so far as to decline delicious morsels in the hope of correcting such an impression, if it should exist.
He racked his brain to find a means of making his work bring him more money. Upon Mr. Kennedy's advice, he sent his "Tales of the Folio Club" to the Philadelphia publishing house of "Carey and Lea." After several weeks of anxious waiting he received a letter accepting the collection for publication but frankly admitting that his receiving any profit from the sale of the book was an exceedingly doubtful matter. They suggested, however, that they be permitted to sell some of the tales to publishers of the then popular "annuals," reserving the right to reprint them in the book. To this the author gladly consented and received with a joy that was pathetic the sum of fifteen dollars from "The Souvenir," which had purchased one of the tales at a dollar a printed page.
He and Wilmer put their heads together in dreams of literary work by which a man could live. One of these dreams took form in the prospectus of a purely literary journal of the highest class which was to be in its criticisms and editorial opinions "fearless, independent and sternly just."
But the scheme required capital and never got beyond the glowing prospectus.