Page 17 of 172 MEMOIR OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. - Complete Poetical Works

His captors carried the unfortunate poet into an electioneering den, where they drugged him with whisky. It was election day for a member of Congress, and Poe with other victims, was dragged from polling station to station, and forced to vote the ticket placed in his hand. Incredible as it may appear, the superintending officials of those days registered the proffered vote, quite regardless of the condition of the person personifying a voter. The election over, the dying poet was left in the streets to perish, but, being found ere life was extinct, he was carried to the Washington University Hospital, where he expired on the 7th of October, 1849, in the forty-first year of his age.

Edgar Poe was buried in the family grave of his grandfather, General Poe, in the presence of a few friends and relatives. On the 17th November, 1875, his remains were removed from their first resting-place and, in the presence of a large number of people, were placed under a marble monument subscribed for by some of his many admirers. His wife's body has recently been placed by his side.

The story of that "fitful fever" which constituted the life of Edgar Poe leaves upon the reader's mind the conviction that he was, indeed, truly typified by that:

"Unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden

bore--

Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore

Of 'Never--nevermore.'"

JOHN H. INGRAM.

* * * * *

POEMS OF LATER LIFE

TO

THE NOBLEST OF HER SEX--

TO THE AUTHOR OF

"THE DRAMA OF EXILE"--

TO

MISS ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT,

OF ENGLAND,

I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME

WITH THE MOST ENTHUSIASTIC ADMIRATION AND

WITH THE MOST SINCERE ESTEEM.

1845 E.A.P.

* * * * *

		Nobody can suspect how many political idiocies have been avoided thanks to the lack of money. Charles-Maurice Talleyrand P rigord