ce on the scene and the trenchancy of his style became more and more evident. A number of the stories which Poe had prepared for "Tales of the Folio Club" in Baltimore before receiving the Saturday Visitor Prize, he now published in the Messenger. Such stories as "Metzengerstein" attracted considerable notice, as they well might, and added not a little to his reputation. In some of them a marked morbidity was even then noted and deprecated. Such deprecatory, comment, however, did not prevent their unique fascination from being felt. Under the title of "Pinakidia" the young editor also published at this time a collection of curious gleanings covering a wide field of interest which were taken from his commonplace book. Many of these he used again later in the Democratic Review under the title of "Marginalia." Poe was described about this time as being "graceful, and with dark, curling hair and magnificent eyes, wearing a Byron collar and looking every inch a poet." The earliest known portrait of him dates from his early days on the Messenger and shows him with sideburns and a slightly sardonic cast of countenance for so young a man. Even at this date he was evidently somewhat fragile and delicate. His complexion which later became quite sallow is described as having been olive. Of his private affairs the most important event of the Richmond epoch was his second marriage to his cousin Virginia. The reasons for this appear to be sufficiently obvious. The first marriage in Baltimore had been clandestine with Mrs. Clemm as the only witness. It had been opposed by influential relatives and had never been made public. All explanations were obviated by a second marriage in public, nothing was said about the first affair, and on May 16, 1830, a marriage bond was signed in the Hustings Court of the City of Richmond which described Virginia Clemm as twenty-one years old. She was, as a matter of fact, less than fourteen years of age at the time, and...
