been, as Stoddard would say, "begotten in mania a potu," and yet, Stoddard naively says, Poe's request to Taylor "was of course complied with." What a compliment for,-Taylor! Could there be than this exhibition of gossip a deeper depth reached of literary imbecility? Yes. The ghoul of a graveyard has more chances than one on which to glut its fiendish hate, and now, Mrs. Clemm, the mother of the poet's wife, she too next comes in for her share of the Stoddard sneer. He visited her also, probably "meekly" by invitation, as he had Mrs. Lewis, and thus "gossips" about her: She was clad in black bombazine, with the regulation widow's cap and white frills." "I hearkened to the mendacious prattle of the forlorn old woman who loved her poor little daughter and the dead child's dead husband so well." Yes, you did! You hearkened, and if your sensibilities to shame had not been thoroughly blunted, you would have hesitated long before manufacturing such an article as this. But then, that rejected "Ode to a Grecian Flute" would have been unavenged, and the "meek" departure of its author down stairs! So Poe, forty years in his grave, must be assailed with such tattling drivel as this, and his mother-in-law and his friends also. Oh! Stoddard, wilt thou, too, never, never die? Must this go on forever? Will the time never come when such stuff as you promulgate shall be repudiated as being part or parcel of the true history of Poe? God speed the day! But hope trembles with fear, for underlying even this outpour of drivel still appears the promise of more to come. You apologize for Griswold by saying, "that if he intimated too much, he withheld more," and add for yourself, "let me pattern after him in this last particular," as if you held in reserve still other unloosened buckets of swash that you might pour if you would upon Poe's devoted head. As the imbecility of age closes its clouds more dense around you, doubtless it will come. When a few more months elapse may we not expect, as your mind reverts to the great original grievance, that "Ode to a Grecian Flute," reverts to that day when you hastily left Poe's sanctum punctured, yet "not downcast, that still another gossipy letter will be born in which the "much more withheld" may appear? A SUGGESTIVE ITEM.* "Lou one of the hangers-on at Joe McG.'s saloon on First street, was arrested yesterday charged with lewd and indecent conduct. She had but just been released from the lock-up for a similar offense, Joe paying her fine. For this, her second offense, she was given the choice of paying $25 or going to jail thirty days, and inasmuch as Joe refuses to put up the money it is probable she will have to go up in spite of her copious tears.” Ο NE of the boasted advantages of High License being to tone up the character of saloons, the above item clipped from a paper printed in a city where High License is in full blast, and in a state whose officials continue to misrepresent it by declaring that the effect of High License has been eminently beneficial, should be good evidence upon the subject This little item throws a very clear light upon the question of whether it be true that a $1,000 license taken by a city to insure to it "gilt-edge" saloons does really accomplish that purpose. Now that the low dives have been eradicated from Minneapolis by the so-called beneficent operations of High License, it was well for its advocates to look after the "lewd and indecent conduct" which, according to the above item, seems to be going on at a "high" dive? Lou, it appears, is a hanger-on at Joe's, and * From Minneapolis Journal. |