Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1885 — A Crow that Followed Poe’s Raven. [ARTICLE]

A Crow that Followed Poe’s Raven.

In the same room at Fordham in which the bones of sweet Annabel Lee, the wife of Edgar Allen Poe, were kept, waiting the transfer into the hands of relatives in Baltimore, was also jealously guarded the original manuscript of “The Raven,” which was destined to a place in the corner-stone of the Poe monument. Late one afternoon, while the window happened to be open, a raven flew in and lighted on the portfolia containing the precious manuscript. The gentleman in the room was, as can be readily conceived, at first much first much startled, but upon approaching the bird and finding it quite tame, explained the strange coincidence satisfactorily enough. The raven showed no disposition to move, and the gentleman having no provision for so unusual a guest, took him to a druggist near by, who kept him for his children, as there was no advertisement for him in the daily papers. Soon after, while visiting at the house of a prominent and wealthy New Yorker, the hostess expressed to him the desire for a tame crow. Thinking the raven as worthy a place in that household as a crow would be, the “gentleman in Nc y York who knew much of Poe’s life,” induced the druggist to return him the raven, which he forthwith sent to the lady before mentioned, and in whose home it still lives a quiet and uneventful life. —New York Tribune.

Thomas Jefferson built a small conservatory at Charlottesville in 1825. Now on the site of that there stands a new $46,000 observatory, endowed with $75,000, and with a new twenty-six inch telescope that cost $46,000. Of the sums mentioned Leander J. McCormick gave SIOO,OOO, W. H. Vanderbilt $25,000, and the alumni of the University of Virginia the balance.