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Show ' i H Edgar Allen Poe LAST Tuesday was the hundredth anniversary H of the birth of Edgar Allen Poe. In many H places in the East the event was celebrated, M and a curious thing is the different forms in which H his memory was treated Generally ho was held H H as a great genius, a world wonder. And that is H fair, too, but that doesn't give any idea of Poe. H Poe was a genius, an exceedingly wonderful man H In some respects, just enough insane to be super- H naturally bright on many subjects. But he was H a weak creature, unfit for this world unless he H v had been born a woman. To put a man like that H I out to make 'a living in the world is a cruelty. It H , would 'be a mer,cy to take a youth such as he was, H put him in a home of detention, give him enough H to eat and drink, give him beautiful pictures to H look al, treat 'him as a patient, not sick enough H to be doctored, but too ill to be trusted out of H . sight, because his mistakes would break his own H heart every day. Reading his books we see lines H here and there, sometimes a whole poem, or al- H most a whole story, which show that he had a H clearer intellect than any mortal in a perfectly H sane condition anywhere ever had. He was al- H ways on the heights, always dreaming of the im- H) possible, the world below him was all magnified H and the stars in their courses above him were R filled with a brilliance of glories which even they H do not possess. And so he passed through life, H his head always nursing impossibilities, and of- H tentimes his stomach craving for food, and to sup- m ply this craving he would take food in the liquid m form and then he would write a poem that was H half angelic and half alcoholic. The like of it H never was, and it is to be hoped the like of it M never will be, and we say this on account of the B man. and not on account of his work. He passed M through life worshipped by women; pitied by H men, and he had heart aches enough every day to H make him glad when night came, and, if conscious- H ness is beyond this life, glad when the whole mis- M erable struggle was over. A wonderful man, M such a mixture of the sublime and the wretched, H such an exhlbtion of genius and such a cringing to M perpetual poverty that the only thought over his M grave is one of pity that one should come into the M world and suffer so much, unappreciated by the B ordinary practical mind, misunderstood by the or- H dinary practical man, a celestial vagrant, an im- M mortal mendicant, and to sum it up in two words, M "poor Poe!" |