for a prize of $50 offered for the best short story submitted to a Baltimore paper, The Saturday Visitor. The prize was awarded by a committee of well known citizens to Poe's "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle." It was his first notable success and marks his emergence into fame. The cash was grateful to his necessity, but a more important effect of the contest was the help given to the poverty stricken young poet by John P. Kennedy, a gentleman of Baltimore of considerable means, a kind heart, and a writer of parts himself. Mr. Kennedy by various timely acts of charity and influence set Poe upon the way to fame. He, Kennedy, enabled Poe to place some of his stories and introduced him to Thomas White, the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, published in Richmond, Va. Poe now began to contribute reviews, and short stories to that periodical and was finally invited in 1835 to come to Richmond as an assistant editor. In the meanwhile Mr. Allan had died, in 1834, and there was no mention of Poe in his will. Two ill-advised trips to Richmond by Poe himself between 1832 and 1834 had only succeeded in further estranging his former guardian and the Allan family. They remained embittered to the last. In July, 1835, Poe left Baltimore to take up his new editorial duties in Richmond. As an editor, considered purely from the aspect of the desk and chair, Poe was a decided success. Subscriptions began to mount for the Southern Literary Messenger. Mr. White might well have been satisfied. He was a kindly man and well disposed. It is significant of Poe's inability to let stimulants alone that within a few weeks after arriving in Richmond he found himself discharged. He returned to Baltimore and there married secretly on September 22, 1835, his first cousin Virginia Clemm. She was only about thirteen years old at the time and the secret marriage was caused by the opposition of relatives to so early a union. Poe now applied again to Mr. White with ...
