New Yorkers Honor Edgar Allan Poe

1920

Cottage Where Edgar Allan Poe Lived and Dreamed Has Been Preserved for Posterity.

Edgar Allan Poe is America's best-beloved writer abroad, according to Vicente Blasco Ibanez, the famous Spanish novelist. The author's greatest afternoon in America was the one set aside for a quiet visit to the humble and tragic home of the author of "The Raven" and "The Cask of Amontillado."

Poe's cottage is a quaint little one-story frame house, painted white, on the Grand Concourse on the upper fringe of the city. The ground around it has been dedicated and is known as Poe park. The building is just the same as it was when Poe lived there in company with his fantastic satans and ethereal sweethearts.

A party of five went with Ibanez. It was just dark when they arrived at the Poe home. The air was chilly and dank, as Poe would have said. Six or seven candles spluttered feebly against the walls and threw fantastic shadows into the small bedroom where, so history hath it, the author of "The Raven" had spent so many nights of anguish and unearthly vision.

It is strange but there are very few New Yorkers who know where Poe lived and they have never seen the park or the little tragic cottage. The only indication that it was the home of the genius of the odd is the little black raven painted in the front.

There is a little porch, much like a modern doll-house porch. At night Poe used to sit out there alone with the stars, smoking and dreaming. Then he was in the wilderness, for New York was many miles away. Off to his right was the Hudson and the Jersey coast. Around about him were all sorts of night cries. He loved the mysterious wails, the ghostly shadows that creep about at night. Many ambitious writers go there at night now to drink in the mental pictures that came to Poe — but instead are howls of the Bronx kiddies, the honk of the auto, the grind of car wheels and all the complex noises of a congested center.

Docility of Birds — Parrots

Docility of Birds

1877

A parrot of some note, in Brook's collection, was notoriously dainty. If food was proffered which its instinct or caprice rejected, it would take it with its foot and throw it down with an exclamation which sounded like "There!" Food to its liking was carefully examined, tasted, and then conveyed to the bird's own tin dish, in which it was packed close by pressure with the bill. If any of the children fell or was hurt, Poll was the first to give the alarm, and did not cease clamoring till the case was attended to.

A gentleman taught his parrot to descend from its perch at the word of command and to stand upon his finger; then, on another order, it turned back downward and hung on the finger by one foot, retaining its hold although it swung about ever so violently. It was very vain, and enjoyed showing its wings. It would walk on the ground backward, if ordered to do so, walking in this direction with the utmost ease. It was extremely fond of music; and with movements of the feet along the perch, danced to all lively tunes, its wings also moving, and its head moving backward and forward in correct time.

By a peculiar working of the serratures of file which all parrots have in the upper mandible, against the lower, it diligently strove to imitate the noise made by a scissors grinder who weekly visited, the street; but finding that this alone did not quite serve the purpose, it had recourse to the expedient of striking its claws against its tin covered perch, and accurately observing the time of the turning of the wheel, effected so exact an imitation once or twice a day that the neighbors said the man had become a perpetual nuisance.