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Show REMINISCENCE OF POE. The painter, William Sartaln, contributed some recollection of Edgar Allan Poe to the Art World : "His biographer, Griswold, has slandered him as intemperate. My father said this was not true, and he was most temperate in drinking. It is a considerable confirmation of this that Poe was a model of punctuality In his reviewing and other work for the magazines during all the ensuing en-suing 15 years of his life, which comprises his literary career. In 1837 he moved to New York and after a year to Philadelphia, where he wrote some of his finest stories. For much of his literary lit-erary career he was half starving. His labor over his writings is shown, no doubt with some exaggeration, however, in his article 'The Philosophy Philoso-phy of Composition,' written shortly after the publication of 'The Raven.' In this essay he enumerates some of his articles of faith, such as: Beauty is the legitimate province of the poem; it is a pure and intense elevation of the soul, not of the intellect nor the heart. "But except for these intermittent indulgences, his addiction to stimulants imist have been grossly gross-ly exaggerated by his biographer Griswold, whom my father has said he had personally seen on quite bad terms with Poo. My father's acquaintance acquaint-ance with him was the more close in the latter years of his life and, as his statements were most positive, these derogatory stories must be taken with a grain of salt. The account I have given of Poe's death after having been robbed of his clothes seems to me to be so reasonable and, moreover, based on my father's contemporary information in-formation that I cannot accept the story of his having been lured Into the bands of an electioneering election-eering gang and drugged, so as to be utilized for depositing ballots In numerous polling places." |