iving at 234 (now 530) North Seventh Street, Philadelphia, in a house still standing. Here, although visited by many loyal friends, among whom were the novelist Captain Mayne Reid, George Rex Graham, Sartain the engraver, Louis Godey, the editor, F. 0. C. Darley, an illustrator, Hirst, the poet, Thomas Clarke, the publisher, and others, Poe himself experienced the pangs of poverty and despair. He was in correspondence with James Russell Lowell and other notables, but unable through various causes, largely due to his temperament and his physical condition, to cope with the world. Sometime in the fall of 1843 he made an abortive attempt to issue a new edition of his tales as The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe. There was a small edition in paper covers to be sold at 12 cents, but No. 1, containing "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Man that Was Used Up,", is the only one of the series known to have appeared, although one copy containing the first tale only is known to exist. This is the rarest of all Poe items from a collector's standpoint. The little paper pamphlet was the seventh of Poe's works. It brought the author no returns. Reduced to the direst necessity, and finding all avenues closed to him in Philadelphia, he now determined to return to New York. Mrs. Clemm was left behind to close up the house, and on April 6, 1844, taking his invalid wife with him, Poe set out for New York City. He arrived there the same evening with $4.50 in his pockets and no definite prospects. Poe and his invalid wife found shelter in a humble boarding house at 130 Greenwich Street. In immediate need of funds he turned one of his favorite tricks and wrote a false news story for the New York Sun, later republished as "The Balloon Hoax." Such hoaxes were "popular" at the time and indulged in by newspaper editors. The story was clever, is notable even now, and fooled thousands at that time—much to Poe's delight. The money so earned enabled Mrs. C...
