22 THE BRONX SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



when the blow had fallen; the eighteen months of fitful 

 effort outline the slow and only partial recovery, as he put 

 aside his grief for her, and feverishly sought the world again. 



For her sake Poe had left the house on Amity Street in the 

 city, nearer our old university home* than his Fordham house 

 is to this new one, had bidden farewell to the pleasant daily 

 society among the literati on Waverley Place, and practised 

 economy and looked for rest and recovery in the white cottage 

 on the Kingshridge Road, of which 1 am to tell you. 



In the very year that Poe came to Fordharn the township 

 of West Farms was made, comprising all that part of the 

 township of Westchester lying west of the Bronx River, north 

 of the Harlem, south of Yonkers and east of the Hudson. It 

 included not only the region known as West Farms, but also 

 the land included in the old manors of Fordham and Mor- 

 risania. In all this territory, in Poe's day, lived not more 

 than three thousand people, of which number the village of 

 West Farms, at the head of navigation on the Bronx River, 

 contained about three hundred. Xo other collection in this 

 region was more than a mere hamlet, and Fordham was one 

 of the least of these. At first it was a mere cross-roads, where 

 the roads from Williams' or Williams's Bridge and Kings- 

 hridge met to continue to West Farms, and the Pelham Manor 

 road crossed east and west. It was only when the Harlem 

 railway gave to its station at that point the name of Fordham, 

 which tip to that time had been vaguely attached to Kings- 

 bridge and its vicinity, that a distinct community settled down 

 at the gates of the Jesuit College of St. John. 



The road from the station, winding up on a pavement of 

 native rock to the level of Fordham Ridge and turning sharply 

 to the north, in ten minutes passed close by the little old house 

 which Poe chose. The wider road of today goes even closer. 

 You who today have seen the house need no description of 

 it from me. Its interior has not changed save that the ex- 

 tension to the east, as Mr. W. H. Valentine tells me. is a later 



* Washington Square East. 



