“I’ll have you know,” she said, “I’m not dead yet, and you will not have to journey to any ‘distant Aidenn’ to ‘clasp’ me.”

“No, thank God!” he breathed, crushing her to him.

* * * * *

It was upon January 29, 1845, that “The Raven” appeared, with Willis’s introductory puff.  In spite of Dr. Griswold and the staff of Graham’s Magazine, it created an instant furor.  It was published and republished upon both sides of the Atlantic.  To quote a contemporary writer, everybody was “raven-mad” about it, except a few “waspish foes” who would do its author “more good than harm.”

It brought to the two bright rooms up the two flights of stairs visitors by the score, eager to congratulate the poet, to make the acquaintance of his interesting wife and mother and to assure all three of their welcome to homes approached by brown-stone steps.

And it brought letters by the score—­some from the other side of the Atlantic.  Among these was one from Miss Elizabeth Barrett, soon to become the wife of Mr. Robert Browning.

“Your ‘Raven’ has produced a sensation here in England,” she wrote.  “Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by its music.  I hear of persons haunted by the ‘Nevermore,’ and one of my friends who has the misfortune of possessing a bust of Pallas never can bear to look at it in the twilight.  Mr. Browning is much struck by the rhythm of the poem.

“Then there is that tale of yours, ‘The Case of M. Valdemar,’ throwing us all into a ‘most admired disorder,’ and dreadful doubts as to whether ‘it can be true,’ as children say of ghost stories.  The certain thing in the tale in question is the power of the writer and the faculty he has of making horrible improbabilities seem near and familiar.”

Of all the letters from far and near, this was the one that gave The Dreamer most pleasure, and as for Virginia and the Mother, they read it until they knew it by heart.

When, some months later, his new book, “The Raven and Other Poems,” came out, its dedication was, “To the noblest of her sex—­Miss Elizabeth Barrett, of England.”

* * * * *

And there was joy in the two rooms up two flights of stairs where Edgar Poe sat at his desk reeling off his narrow little strips of manuscript by the yard.  His work filled The Broadway Journal and overflowed into many other periodicals.

While he created stories and poems, he gave more attention than ever to the duties of his cherished post as Defender of Purity of Style for American Letters, and the fame to which he had risen giving him new authority, he made or marred the reputation of many a literary aspirant.