Page 56 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

Solving a cryptograph is like doing a mathematical problem, and Poe was
very clever at it.

He published a series of articles on "Cryptography" or systems of secret

writing, in _Alexander’s Weekly Messenger_, and challenged any reader to
send in a cipher which he could not translate into ordinary language.
Hundreds were sent to him, and he solved them all, though it took up a

great deal of his time.

In the same line with this was another feat of his. Dickens’s story, "Barnaby
Rudge," was coming out in parts from week to week, as a serial
publication. From the first chapters Poe calculated what the outcome of the

plot would be, and published it in the Saturday Evening Post. He guessed
the story so accurately that Dickens was greatly surprised and asked him if

he were the devil.

Again at a later date Poe wrote a remarkable story, "The Mystery of Marie

Roget." A young girl had been murdered in New York. The newspapers
were full of accounts of the crime, but the police could get no clew to the

murderers. In Poe’s story he wrote out exactly what happened on the night
of the murder, and explained the whole thing, as if he were an expert
detective. Afterward, by the confessions of two of the participants, it was

proved that his solution of the mystery was almost exactly the truth.

"The Gold-Bug" was not published until sometime later, but it was as editor
of _Graham’s Magazine_ that Poe first became known as a writer of
detective stories. One of the most famous is "The Murders of the Rue

Morgue." It is an imaginary story, but none the less interesting. A murder
was committed in Paris by an orang-outang, which had climbed in at a

window and then closed the window behind it. The police could find no
clew; but the hero of Poe’s story follows the facts out by a number of clever
observations of small facts.

"The Gold-Bug" seems to have been written in 1842 for Poe’s projected

magazine, The Stylus. F.O.C. Darley, the well-known artist, was to draw
pictures for it at seven dollars each. Poe himself took to him the manuscript