Manly Wade Wellman: When it was moonlight

Let . my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore,

—The Raven.

His hand, as slim as a white claw, dipped a quillful of ink and Wrote in one corner of the page the date—
March 3,1842. Then:

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

By Edgar A. Poe

     He hated his middle name, the name of his miserly and spiteful stepfather. For a moment he considered crossing out even the initial; then he told himself that he was only wool-gathering, putting off the drudgery of writing. And write he must, or. starve—the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper was.clamoring for the story he had promised. Well, today he had heard a tag of gossip—, his mother-in-law had it from, a neighbor—that revived in his mind a subject always fascinating. .

     He began rapidly to write, in a fine copperplate hand:

     There are certain themes of which' the interest is all-absorbing, but which are entirely too horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction— 

     This would really be an essay, not a tale, and he could do it justice. Ofter he thought of the whole world as a vast fat cemetery, close set with tombs in which not all the occupants were at rest—too many struggled unavailingly against their smothering shrouds, their locked and weighted coffin Jids. What were his own literary, labors, he mused, but a struggle against being shut down and throttled by a society as heavy and grim and senseless as clods heaped by a sexton's spade?

     He paused, and went to the slate mantelshelf for a candle. His kerosene lamp had long ago been pawned, and it was dark for midafternoon, even in March. Elsewhere in the house his mother-in-law swept busily, and in the room next to his sounded, the quiet breathing of his invalid wife. Poor Virginia slept, and for the moment knew no pain. Returning with his light, he dipped more ink and continued down the sheet:

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