Page 55 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

"There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a snow-white
counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold and the sick lady had the

dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on
the bed wrapped in her husband’s great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat

in her bosom."

On one Saturday in January, 1847, Virginia died. Her husband, wrapped in

the military cloak that had once covered her, followed the body to the tomb
in the family vault of the Valentines, relatives of the family.

CHAPTER X

POE AS A STORY-WRITER

Next to "The Raven," Poe’s most famous work is that fascinating story,
"The Gold-Bug," perhaps the best detective story that was ever written, for

it is based on logical principles which are instructive as well as interesting.
Poe’s powerful mind was always analyzing and inventing. It is these
inventions and discoveries of his which make him famous.

The story of the gold-bug is that of a man who finds a piece of parchment

on which is a secret writing telling where Captain Kidd hid his treasure off
the coast of South Carolina. The gold-beetle has nothing whatever to do
with the real story, and is only introduced to mystify. It is one of the

principles of all conjuring tricks to have something to divert the attention.
Poe’s detective story is a sort of conjuring trick, but it is all the more

interesting because he fully explains it.

Cryptographs are systems of secret writing. The letter e is represented by

some strange character, perhaps the figure 8. In "The Gold-Bug" t is a
semicolon and h is 4, so that; 48 means the. Sometimes the letter e is

represented by several signs, any one of which the writer may use; and
perhaps the word the, which occurs so often, is represented by a single
character, like x. Often, too, the words are run together, so that at first sight

you cannot tell where one word begins and another ends.