Page 112 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

and started out to look for work. By good fortune he met Putnam, the
American publisher, who lent him a sovereign (five dollars) and gave him

work that would enable him to earn his living until he could get money
from America for his return passage.

CHAPTER VIII

HIS FIRST LOVE AND GREATEST SORROW

At the very first school which Bayard Taylor attended there was a little
Quaker girl who would whisper with a blush to her teacher, "May I sit

beside Bayard?" Her name was Mary Agnew. As schoolmates and
neighbors the two children grew up together; and in time Bayard began to
confide to his diary his dream of happiness with her. Toward this object, all

his thoughts and plans were gradually directed.

Mary Agnew's father did not countenance this neighbor lover, however,
and when Bayard set out for Europe he was not allowed to write to her. He
sent messages through his mother, and occasionally heard from the young

girl in the same way. On his return, however, he grew more bold, and soon
became openly engaged to her. The romance is a sadly beautiful one; for

this fair girl who was his inspiration during the years of his hardest
struggles, finally fell into a decline and died just as he was beginning to
earn the money that would have made them happy together.

"I remember him," says a neighbor, speaking of the two at this time, "as a

bright, blushing, diffident youth, just entering manhood; and with him I
always associate that gentle and beautiful girl, with matchless eyes, who
inspired many of his early lyrics, and whose death filled the nest of love

with snow."

Mary Agnew reminds us of Poe's beautiful Virginia Clemm, his "Annabel
Lee." Grace Greenwood wrote of her as "a dark-eyed young girl with the
rose yet unblighted on cheek and lip, with soft brown, wavy hair, which,

when blown by the wind, looked like the hair oft given to angels by the old