Page 44 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

Poe did not like the life at West Point in the least, though he amused his
mates by writing satirical verses about the professors. After a few months

he asked to be discharged; but Mr. Allan would not consent. So Poe made
up his mind that he would have himself expelled. He stayed away from

parade, roll-call, and guard duty. As a court-martial was then in session, he
was summoned before it. He denied the most flagrant charge against him;
but this only made his case worse, and he was expelled from the academy.

CHAPTER VI

LIVING BY LITERATURE

Once more the young poet found himself cast out on the world, without
home or friends. He could hope for nothing more from Mr. Allan, after his

disgrace at the military academy, and he had found out that army life was
not so fine a refuge from starvation as he had thought it. He was a proud,

melancholy young man, and in school and college had learned many bad
habits. He had no trade nor practical knowledge of any kind of work,
though he was quick and ingenious. He had studied the art of writing, and

this alone offered him the means of earning a livelihood. How poor and
precarious a chance it was, we shall see as we go on.

While waiting for appointment to the Military Academy the preceding year,
Poe had made acquaintance with his father’s relatives in Baltimore. He

formed some literary connections there, and had a volume of his poems
published. It was entitled "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, by

Edgar A. Poe." "Al Aaraaf" was a poem about a star that a great astronomer
had seen blaze forth and then disappear.

When he left West Point in April, 1831, nearly two years after the
publication of his Baltimore volume, Poe was short of money; and to

supply his needs his fellow-students subscribed for a new edition of his
poems. For this, seventy-five cents was stopped out of the pay of each, and
a publisher in New York agreed to issue the book in good style. The cadets

thought his volume would contain the many funny squibs he had written on