Once in discussing _The Raven_, Poe observed that he had never heard it correctly delivered by even the best readers--that is, not as he desired that it should be read. That evening, a number of visitors being present, he was requested to recite the poem, and complied. His impressive delivery held the company spell-bound, but in the midst of it, I, happening to glance toward the open window above the level roof of the greenhouse, beheld a group of sable faces the whites of whose eyes shone in strong relief against the surrounding darkness. These were a number of our family servants, who having heard much talk about "Mr. Poe, the poet," and having but an imperfect idea of what a poet was, had requested permission of my brother to witness the recital. As the speaker became more impassioned and excited, more conspicuous grew the circle of white eyes, until when at length he turned suddenly toward the window, and, extending his arm, cried, with awful vehemence, "Get thee back into the tempest, and the night's Plutonian shore!" there was a sudden disappearance of the sable visages, a scuttling of feet, and the gallery audience was gone. Ludicrous as was the incident, the final touch was given when at that moment Miss Poe, who was an extraordinary character in her way, sleepily entered the room, and with a dull and drowsy deliberation seated herself on her brother's knee. He had subsided from his excitement into a gloomy despair, and now, fixing his eyes upon his sister, he concluded:
And the raven never flitting, still is sitting, _still_ is sitting, On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door; And its eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming--
The effect was irresistible; and as the final "nevermore" was solemnly uttered the half-suppressed titter of two very young persons in a corner was responded to by a general laugh. Poe remarked quietly that on his next delivery of a public lecture "he would take Rose along, to act the part of the raven, in which she seemed born to excel." ...
It is with feelings of deep sadness, even after the lapse of so many years, that I approach the close of these reminiscences.
Poe one day told me that it was necessary that he should go to New York. He must make certain preparations for establishing his magazine, the _Stylus_, but he should in less than two weeks return to Richmond, where he proposed henceforth to reside. He looked forward to this arrangement with great pleasure. "I mean to turn over a new leaf; I shall begin to lead a new life," he said, confidently. He had often spoken to me of his books,--"few, but _recherché_,"--and he now proposed to send certain of these by express, for my perusal. "You must annotate them extensively," he said. "A book wherein the minds of the author and the reader are thus brought in contact is to me a hundredfold increased in interest. It is like flint and steel." One of the books which he desired me to read was Mrs. Browning's poems, and another one of Hawthorne's works. I remember his saying of the latter that he was "indisputably the best prose writer in America;" that "Irving and the rest were mere commonplace beside him;" and that "there was more inspiration of true genius in Hawthorne's prose than in all Longfellow's poetry." This may serve to give an idea of his own opinion of what constitutes genius, though some of Longfellow's poems he pronounced "perfect of their kind."