47

W

HEN Poe was attending the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville, it fell to the lot of my greatuncle, Peter Pindar Pease, to make his acquaintance. Pease afterwards met the poet again in Boston, at a time when his biographers seem to have lost track of Poe, and later met him again in New York.

It seems a pity that this companionship with this gifted genius should have fallen to the lot of as unsympathetic a person as my late kinsman. Indeed, the old gentleman never attached any importance to his association with Poe, and it was only by persistent inquiry that. my own uncle, Judge Harlow Pease, drew from his Uncle Peter the facts here presented just as the Judge passed them on to me. Had it not

PETER PINDAR PEASE, DEACON AND ABOLITIONIST, WHO AS A YOUTH SHOOK DICE WITH POE FOR A COPY OF HOGARTH'S PRINT'S been for the latter's intense interest in Poe and his tireless curiosity, these interesting sidelights on several phases of the character and activities of Poe might never have been preserved.

Peter Pease was a stanch prohibitionist, and he believed Poe to be dissolute. He was a deacon in his church at Oberlin, Ohio (a determined pillar), and he regarded Poe as an outcast. Furthermore, old Deacon Pease was deeply interested in the

"Underground Railway ""before the war,

and he assumed Poe to be a Southerner. Finally, the old gentleman cared nothing for any poetry outside his hymn-book, and therefore the entire scheme of Edgar Allan Poe's history and genius was without value to him.

SHAKING DICE FOR HOGARTH

As a boy old Pease was apprenticed to an itinerant saddler, Hermann Tucker by name, and shortly before the early '30s arrived at Charlottesville, Virginia, where the worthy harness-maker opened a shop, and my great-uncle became his assistant.

Trade was pretty brisk, and soon the little shop expanded into a sort of curio store filled with second-hand articles, including a library which had fallen under

the auctioneer's hammer in order to satisfy a plantation debt and so came into the possession of Tucker. Among these books was a rare, edition of Hogarth's prints, and this work the young assistant resolved to purchase on the installment plan from his employer.

Two small payments had been made when Poe, then attending the college there, happened into the shop one day, noticed the book, and desired to buy it. Upon Tucker's telling Poe that his clerk was attempting to purchase the work out of his meager earnings, the poet asked to be made known to my great-uncle, and thus their acquaintanceship began.

Poe immediately invited. young Peter up to his room, asking him to bring the Hogarth along with him that they might look it over together, and the invitation was accepted.

Next evening the call was made, and after some parley Poe suggested that they gamble for the book, agreeing to pay Peter the full price which Tucker asked in case he lost. If Peter lost, he was to continue paying off the debt to Tucker and Poe was to keep the Hogarth. My great-uncle had been brought up to fear the devil and all his works with Calvinistic severity, but he resolved to take the chance of getting the book for nothing, so the dice were thrown.

Poe lost, and promptly paid over the money. Whatever became of the Hogarth I do not know. It is certainly not in the Pease family library and Peter probably sold it. This incident occurred some time in May, 1826, as nearly as the old Deacon remembered it.

LIVING UNDER AN ASSUMED NAME

In July of the same year young Pease separated from his employer and returned to New England, settling in Boston, where he was again to meet Poe, though under vastly different circumstances. Poe left the University in December of 1826, and, breaking with his foster-father, Mr. Allan, started out to seek his fortune, full of hopes and with supreme confidence in his genius, but knowing absolutely nothing of the world.

It was while unloading a dray of hides on the water-front one blustering March afternoon that my great-uncle recognized in a pale, rather stoop-shouldered clerk, emerging from a mercantile house hard by, his former acquaintance who had diced with him unsuccessfully in Virginia a year before. He was about to hail Poe when the latter, catching sight of him, turned away and hastily disappeared around the

corner.

Thinking that Poe did not care to renew the friendship, Pease returned to his work, but when he had finished and was starting homeward, there was Poe waiting for him some distance down the street. He was very shabbily appareled.

Pease hailed him, but Poe hurriedly pushed him into an alleyway and begged him not to speak his name aloud, giving for his reason that "he had left home to seek his fortune, and until he had hit it hard he preferred to remain incognito."

As my great-uncle recounted it to Judge Pease: "He (Poe) told me that he had clerked for two months in a wholesale

merchandise house on the water-front at a very small salary, the most of which he had been too proud to ask for, and his employer, taking advantage of this pride and being a man of brutal and unscrupulous character, the boy was easily done out of most of the money which he had earned.

"His landlady, too, was a woman of no attainments, and had no patience with a boarder who sat up nights writing on paper which he could not afterward sell. She soon turned him into the street.

"He then tried literary work, but failed to obtain employment on any of the large journals. Finally he secured work in the office of an obscure paper as market reporter; but, the proprietor being a man of shady reputation, the office soon got into debt, and soon after Poe joined it the paper stopped publication. "He then told me that he was resolved

to enlist in the army, for his resources were utterly exhausted, and he was determined not to write to former friends for help. I believe he remained in Boston seven months altogether."

As is well known, Poe did enlist in the army in May, 1827, and served for two years.

POE'S PLAN TO GO WEST

Peter Pease did not see the poet again until 1831, when they met in New York, where Poe had gone, he said, to secure the publication of a book of his poems by Harpers. He claimed, almost boisterously, that he had "hit it hard" (evidently a favorite expression with him), meaning that his fortune was made. He told Pease that he was living in the vicinity of Madison Square, that he loved to walk beneath the elm trees there, and invited Pease to go with him for a refreshment. But my great-uncle was in a hurry to catch the boat for Amboy, so, after a short conversation, they shook hands and parted.

To his nephew, Harlow, the old deacon frequently mentioned a Mr. E. M. Murdock, who was a one-time friend of his living near Cincinnati, where the suburb of Delhi is now located, and with whom he had "Underground Railway" interests. Murdock was introduced to Poe in Phila

delphia at the time the poet was editor of "Graham's Magazine." Upon learning that Murdock was from the West, Poe was all attention and asked about the literary outlook there, at the same time mentioning that he had friends in the Western Reserve and that he was thinking of locating out there.

Murdock promptly discouraged Poe, and, meeting him some time later, asked him why he had desired to make a change, since he was doing so, well.

"That is just the reason," answered Poe. "I was doing so well here I thought I could do better."

In the summer of 1843 Poe visited Saratoga in an effort to recuperate his own health, but more especially to arrange for treatment for his wife, Virginia, whose health was rapidly failing.

expense

"In order to make this trip," said Murdock to my great-uncle, "Poe cast about him for means by which the of the journey might be met without crippling his already straitened circumstances. He was so far fortunate as to secure a small loan and the acceptance by a New York magazine of one of his stories submitted many months before, the fate of which he had long given up as hopeless but which now came into port unexpectedly and at a most opportune moment.

"His trip resulted in nothing satisfactory. At Saratoga he discovered that his means would not begin to warrant the moving of Virginia, if, indeed, she could weather the trip at all. His own health was not benefited, and after only a few days of discouraging inquiry he returned to Philadelphia utterly cast down in spirit over this additional disappointment, from which he was long in rallying," concluded the informant.

SOME RANDOM NOTES

At the time of the Boston meeting Poe, though very poorly clad, was scrupulously neat. He seemed to be very tired, so my great-uncle related, "as though from loss of sleep."

When he met him in New York, Peter Pease noticed a peculiar characteristic of Poe's, and this was that while walking he held his fist behind his back, rubbing the thumb slowly back and forth over the index finger. This he noticed at once, and it struck my great-uncle as being "very peculiar."

Referring to their previous talk in Boston, the Deacon said that Poe frowned at the thought of his hard experiences in that city five years back, and admitted that he felt desperate enough to "do anything except cut his throat."

Poe's biographers are in doubt as to his having gone to New York in 1831. He was certainly there according to this.

The recent death of Judge Harlow Pease, of Watertown, Wisconsin, enables me to publish these facts about Edgar Allan Poe.

It was one of my uncle's peculiarities not to allow his name to be used in connection with any published memoir. He said to me with decision :

"You may print what I have told you, Theodore, after I am dead. I have no objection to that."

Dre

...

O you know of anything good to read? Even should you be only an occasional reader of books-an intermittent dabbler in catching titles and literary color schemes-even then the occasion arises when you will be forced to answer this question. But if you be the more or less apprehensive possessor of a library of your own-with your ears up all the time listen. ing for the approaching footsteps of some shameless borrower-then, indeed, your responsibility is acute. What you do or don't know about a particular book may determine your future relationship to some friend who-aside from his or her literary idiosyncrasies—is for the present the best friend you have.

Somebody is always asking some one at some time if he knows of a good book to read. To say the right thing, either about the right or wrong book, to either the right or wrong person, is an intellectual diversion of no mean proportions.

And the attack is as likely as not to come suddenly, when you are off your guard. You cannot parry it without a sense of evasion. Besides, you may not want to parry it. You may have sat up in bed half

the night before reading a tome that makes the celebrated ride of Prince Kamar AlAkmár on his enchanted horse seem dull in comparison. Yet even this has its dangers, for our literary enthusiasms often have to be lived down in deep humiliation.

After having been reading it the previous week with great exultation of spirit, I once remarked to a casual acquaintance that the Confessions of St. Augustine was one of the greatest books in the world; an opinion which time has failed to modify. He solemnly jotted the title in his note-book, to my immediate consternation. But it was too late to back down. The suspicion with which he afterwards came to regard me was not allayed by the reckless recommendation as "light reading" of that delightful detective thriller of Sax Rhomer's, "Dope." For my acquaintance I was thereafter a literary outcast.

Then there is the discriminating intellectual fiend who prides himself on his taste, and who feels no doubt that he is cleverly flattering you in asking you the fatal question. You are never sure of what he likes, because the thing you have declared good. he straightway announces is intolerable. You wonder why he continues to consult and no doubt have a distinctive feelyou, ing that he is only doing it to show you up. You find yourself adding to your statement- "That is, if you feel like that kind of a book," thus hoping to get back at him by the subtle intimation that if he doesn't like it there must be something wrong with him.

And the ladies! Caught in an attack of Ibsen fever, I stated to a charming and highly domesticated specimen who talked somewhat intelligently of the modern drama-if anbody does-that the "Doll's House 66 was an epoch-maker." But she returned to me later with the fundamental observation that no woman in her right mind would have done as Nora did. Another lady of similar proclivities asked me if "The Moon and Sixpence" was the kind of a book that one "ought" to read. In a moment of self-admired caution I said No-with the qualification that in some respects it was a great book. She got it,

and reproached me with my recommendation, declaring that it was quite horrid. I have no doubt that to this day she is convinced that I am a morbid and thoroughly irresponsible critic.

It may not be out of place here, if for nothing else than to increase our efficiency, to give a list of phrases to be used by timid people when recommending books to inquiring friends :

"It is a good book, but. I am bound to say that the reading. of it depends upon your mood."

"You couldn't do better-that is, if your only object is to pass the time.'

66

Everybody is reading it. But that may not mean anything to you.'

"In case you don't like it, please don't blame me."

If your friend is a chronic borrower, however, and you purposely wish to insult him, the following defensive phrases may be used as occasion warrants. But upon other occasions they should be carefully avoided:

all

"I couldn't afford to spend the time reading it. But it's just the book for you "It's badly written, but a good story. I'm sure you will like it."

"There's nothing to it but you may get a lot out of it."

"It's a fascinating book for an idle hour-if you know how to skip. It ought to amuse you for a couple of days."

"You certainly ought to read it; it will give you an entirely new point of view." "It will give you something new to talk about."

I once overheard a young woman who sat back of me at Walter Hampden's "Hamlet" declare that it was evident that Polonius didn't know his part, he repeated himself so much. But if that had been said by a well-read gentleman of fifty or more, in the right company, it would doubtless have been received with smiles. The problem, therefore, seems to depend upon one's age, one's standing, and one's company. But was it not a nice old lady at Ruskin's, in an endeavor to mitigate one of those dreadful pauses that sometimes occur even among the elect, who suddenly remarked that "the Bible was such a good book!

BOOKS RECEIVED

FICTION

Bluestone. By Marguerite Wilkinson. The Macmillan Company, New York.

Great Modern American Stories (The). Compiled and Edited by William Dean Howells. Boni & Liveright, New York.

BIOGRAPHY

Venizelos. By Richard Boardman. The De Vinne Press, New York.

WAR BOOKS

Simsadus: London. The American Navy in
Europe. By John Langdon Leighton. Illus-
trated. Henry Holt & Co., New York.
Spirit of Selective Service (The). By Major-
General E. H. Crowder, U. S. A. The Century
Company, New York.

War and the New Age (The). By Willis
Mason West. Allyn & Bacon, Boston.
War, the World and Wilson (The). By
George Creel. Harper & Brothers, New York.

SCIENCE

General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (A). By Prof. Sigmund Freud, LL.D. Preface by G. Stanley Hall. Boni & Liveright, New York.

"Compare the Work"

Work must be truly enjoyable to be done well Ten save just a fraction of the nervous

energy expended thousands of times through the delicate, flying finger-tips of your stenographer is to make typing pleasant and work enjoyable. The fatigue of over-wrought nerves has been entirely eliminated.

The action of the Royal Typewriter, like that of a grand piano, responds almost to an indication by the finger of the key desired. There seems to be no conscious effort of striking it. There is a rapid calculation, a selection of the character and lo! the impression appears, as if by magic, on the paper. It is something new and fascinating in the life of a stenographer who never used a Royal before, to come to the office with no dread of the day's work. It is a pleasure to anticipate rapidly flying fingers over quickly responding keys.

Then, too, there are the beautiful type impressions giving character and clearness to the typewritten page -a source of satisfaction to stenographer and employer alike.

ROYAL TYPEWRITER COMPANY, Inc. Royal Typewriter Building, 364-366 Broadway, New York Branches and Agencies the World Over

ROYAL

TYPEWRITERS

Poland

W Poland, found on another page of

HAT, according to the editorial on

this issue, are the aims and purposes of Bolshevist Russia and Pan-Germanist Germany?

If such are the aims and purposes of these two friendly forces, is the situation in your opinion fraught with as much danger to American liberty as The Outlook thinks it is? Under present world conditions, how could the Bolsheviki and their allies work harm to your freedom and mine?

Can you give any reasons, other than selfish ones, why Poland should be a free and independent nation?

If Poland is to be saved from the enemies of freedom and liberty, she seemingly needs more than moral and perhaps more than material support in the form of food and military supplies. What would you be willing that the United States do for Poland? Would you yourself be willing to go to Europe and fight for the freedom and independence of that country?

Is the fact that the League of Nations is not aiding Poland proof that it is a worthless piece of machinery?

In connection with this editorial you certainly ought to read the article by Major Richard S. Davis, found on pages 21-24 of this issue.

If you are interested in becoming better acquainted with the Polish question and with the Poles in history you will do well to read: "Poland and the Polish Question," by N. Hill (Stokes); "Poland: A Study in National Idealism," by M. M. Gardner (Scribners); "Poland's Case for Independence," by A. Zeleski (Dodd, Mead); "Reconstruction of Poland and the Near East," by H. A. Gibbons (Century).

The Pig and the Primary

When and how did our present primary system come into existence? Have all of the States adopted the direct primary? What is the object of the direct primary? Make clear the difference between the "closed primary " and the "open primary." What advantages and disadvantages has each? Can you tell why you prefer one to the other?

Mr. Pulsifer says "our present primary

laws are as diverse as our divorce laws." What proof can you give in support of this statement?

What points in common have the various State primary systems?

How would you prove to a foreigner that our Government is a party government? Was it such originally?

Some people in our country would de

1 These questions and comments are designed not ouly for the use of current events classes and clubs, debating societies, teachers of history and English, and the like, but also for discussion in the home and for suggestion to any reader who desires to study current affairs as well as to read about them. -THE EDITORS.

necessary in conducting a Presidential campaign? For what purposes can money be legitimately spent in such a campaign? Would you set a limit on the amount of money that could be spent legitimately in an election? Explain why or why not.

Do large campaign funds tend to defeat the purpose for which they have been raised? Can you cite any cases in history that show that they do?

What evidence has Governor Cox given

are equally adaptable to the storage

of minute or bulky

cans are raising a huge campaign fund? What responsibility should a candidate for

accuracy of the statements he makes in an election campaign?

unfounded charges of corruption?

tribute to campaign funds? Who are prohibited from so doing?

What interest would a corporation have in subscribing to a party fund? Have corporations ever subscribed to the funds of both leading parties at the same time? If they have done this, what purpose could they have had in doing so?

Woman Suffrage.

How long has woman suffrage been a question of real public interest in the United States? Which State was the pioneer in granting suffrage to women?

Do you or do you not think those who oppose woman suffrage can be essentially democratic in point of view?

What arguments do you hear for and against woman suffrage? What is your own personal opinion of this question? Why, in your opinion, has the West taken more enthusiastically to woman suffrage than either the South or East?