The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1238]
If there is any service I can render you, critically or otherwise, after issue of your book or before, command me without scruple[.]
I would be gratified if you would reply to this note. How happens it that you have flown away to Providence? or is this a Providential escape? Do you know Mrs Whitman? I feel deep interest in her poetry and character. I have never seen her — but once. Anne Lynch, however, told me many things about the romance of her character which singularly interested me and excited my curiosity. Her poetry is, beyond question, poetry — instinct with genius. Can you not tell me something about her — any thing — every thing you know — and keep my secret — that is to say let no one know that I have asked you to do so? May Itrust you? I can — and will.
Believe me truly your friend
Edgar A. Poe
Miss Anna Blackwell
P.S. Perhaps it would be advisable for you to defer your volume until after issue of “The Painters of America” — so as to take advantage of any impressions which may be made by your “Legend of the Waterfall” — but I am talking nonsense — you will do this of course.
I have no doubt whatever of the literary success of your book.
BOLTON, RICHARD
Richard Bolton to Edgar Allan Poe — November 4, 1841
Pontotoc, Miss., Nov. 4, 1841
Dear Sir:
The November number of your valuable magazine has just arrived. To my great surpise (surprise) no notice is taken of my solution of the cryptograph poposed (proposed) to your readers in the August number. This I can attribute only to accident or over sight. As you had thrown the gauntlet which I took up, I >>must<< call upon you as a true man and no craven to render me according to the terms of the defiance the honours of a field worthily contested and fairly won.
About the last of August a friend lent me for perusal your magazine for that month. On the ninth of September, within a month after the arrival of the magazine my solution was mailed (postage paid) addressed to the “editor.” Accompanying it were certificates of two subscribers, Messrs. Glokenau and L. C. Draper (the latter assistant postmaster) that I had effected the solution, unaided by the key and that the September number in which the key was exposed had not arrived.
My solution fully agrees with your published solution except in two words about which I will soon take occasion to remark. I therefore claim to have fully complied with the terms of the challenge and to be entitled to all the rights, privileges and honours therein expressed.
My solution was as follows:
In one of those perpatetic (peripatetic) circumrotations I obviated a rustic whom I subjected to catechetical interrogation respecting the homonomial characteristic of the edifice to which I was approximate. With a volubility uncongealed by the frigorific powers of villatic bashfulness he ejaculated a voluminous replication from the universal tenor of whose contexts I deduce the subsequent amalgamation of heterogeneous facts (or fancy). Without dubiety incipient pretension is apt to terminate in final vulgarity as parturient mountains have been fabulated to produce muscupular abortions, yet the institution, the subject of my remarks has not been without cause the theme of the ephemeral columns of quotidian journals and of enthusiastic encomiations in conversational intercourse.
Notes (1) i, omitted in the cipher. (2) t, omitted in the cipher. (3) homonomial — a Greek derivative compound as in homologue and binomial. Ouovouos, according to authority (Dvanyan ??)” That have similar laws.” May well be used to designate architectural