Managerial Accounting 4e Solutions Manual Chapter 2 Building Blocks of Managerial Accounting

(5-10 min.) S2-3

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Chapter 2

Building Blocks of Managerial Accounting

Quick Check Questions

Answers:

QC2-1. c QC2-3. a QC2-5. c QC2-7. b QC2-9. a

QC2-2. b QC2-4. c QC2-6. d QC2-8. c QC2-10. C

Short Exercises

(5 min.) S2-1

Flash Co. is a manufacturer, because it has three kinds of inventory: Raw Materials Inventory, Work in Process
Inventory, and Finished Goods Inventory.

Zippy Co. is a merchandiser, because it has a single inventory account.

Woody Co. is a service company, because it has no inventory.

(10 min.) S2-2

a. Service companies typically do not have an inventory account.

b. Honda Motors converts raw materials inventory into finished products.
c. An insurance company, a health care provider, and a bank are all examples of service companies.
d. Wholesalers buy products in build from producers, mark them up, and resell them to retailers.
e. Manufacturing companies report three types of inventory on a balance sheet.
Managerial Accounting 4e Solutions Manual Chapter 2 Building Blocks of Managerial Accounting

(5-10 min.) S2-3

f. Inventory (merchandise) for a company such as Staples includes all of the costs necessary to purchase
products and get them onto the store shelves.
g. Most for-profit organizations can be described as being in one (or more) of three categories: merchandising,
service, and manufacturing.
h. Work in process inventory is composed of goods partially through the manufacturing process (not finished
yet).
i. Land’s End, Sears Roebuck & Co., and LL Bean are all examples of merchandising companies.

Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. 2-1

Managerial Accounting 4e Solutions Manual Chapter 2 Building Blocks of Managerial Accounting

(5-10 min.) S2-3

a. Marketing
b. Design
c. Production
d. Distribution
e. Distribution
f. Customer service
g. Production
h. Production
i. Research and Development (R&D)

(5-10 min.) S2-4

Cost Direct or Indirect cost?

a. Depreciation of the building Indirect
b. Cost of costume jewelry on the mannequins in the Juniors department Direct
c. Cost of bags used to package customer purchases at the main registers for the
store Indirect
d. The Medina Kohl’s store manager’s salary Indirect
e. Cost of security staff at the Medina store Indirect
f. Manager of Juniors department Direct
g. Juniors department sales clerks Direct
h. Cost of Juniors clothing Direct
i. Cost of hangers used to display the clothing in the store Indirect
j. Electricity for the building Indirect
k. Cost of radio advertising for the store Indirect
l. Juniors clothing buyers’ salaries (these buyers buy for all Juniors departments of
Kohl’s stores) Indirect

(10 min.) S2-5

a. Indirect costs cannot be directly traced to a(n) cost object .

b. Total costs include the costs of all resources used throughout the value chain.
c. GAAP requires companies to use only inventoriable product costs for external financial reporting.
d. Company-paid fringe benefits may include health insurance, retirement plan contributions, payroll taxes, and
paid vacations.
e. When manufacturing companies sell their finished products, the costs of those finished products are removed
from inventory and expensed as cost of goods sold.
f. Conversion costs are the costs of transforming direct materials into finished goods.
g. Period costs include R&D, marketing, distribution, and customer service costs.
h. Direct material plus direct labor equals prime costs.
i. Steel, tires, engines, upholstery, carpet, and dashboard instruments are used in the assembly of a car. Since
the manufacturer can trace the cost of these materials (including freight-in and import duties) to specific units
or batches of vehicles, they are considered direct costs of the vehicles.
j. Costs that can be traced directly to a(n) cost object are called direct costs .
k. Inventoriable product costs are initially treated as assets on the balance sheet.
l. The allocation process results into a less precise cost figure being assigned to the cost objects.
2-2 Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc.
Managerial Accounting 4e Solutions Manual Chapter 2 Building Blocks of Managerial Accounting

(5-10 min.) S2-3

Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. 2-3

Managerial Accounting 4e Solutions Manual Chapter 2 Building Blocks of Managerial Accounting

(5-10 min.) S2-6

a. Period cost
b. Inventoriable product cost
c. Period cost
d. Inventoriable product cost
e. Period cost
f. Inventoriable product cost
g. Period cost
h. Inventoriable product cost
i. Inventoriable product cost

(5-10 min.) S2-7

Period Cost or If an Inventoriable

COST Inventoriable Product Cost: Is it
Product Cost? DM, DL, or MOH?
a. Standard packaging materials used to package individual
units of product for sale (e.g., cereal boxes in which cereal is
packaged) Product DM
b. Lease payment on administrative headquarters Period
c. Telephone bills relating to customer service call center Period
d. Property insurance – 40% of building is used for sales and 40% Period; —
administration; 60% of building is used for manufacturing 60% Product MOH
e. Wages and benefits paid to assembly-line workers in the
manufacturing plant Product DL
f. Depreciation on automated production equipment Product MOH
g. Salaries paid to quality control inspectors in the plant Product MOH
h. Repairs and maintenance on factory equipment Product MOH

2- Copyright © 2015 Pearson Education, Inc. 2-4

4
Another document from Scribd.com that is
random and unrelated content:
Chee, chee, chee.

Soon as the little ones chip the shell

Six wide mouths are open for food;

Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,

Gathering seed for the hungry brood.

Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

This new life is likely to be

Hard for a gay young fellow like me.

Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln at length is made

Sober with work and silent with care;

Off is his holiday garment laid,

Half-forgotten that merry air,

Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

Nobody knows but my mate and I

Where our nest and our nestlings lie.

Chee, chee, chee.

Summer wanes; the children are grown;

Fun and frolic no more he knows;

Robert of Lincoln’s a humdrum crone;

Off he flies, and we sing as he goes:

Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

When you can pipe that merry old strain,

Robert of Lincoln, come back again.

Chee, chee, chee.

DROUGHT.
LUNGED amid the limpid waters,

Or the cooling shade beneath,

Let me fly the scorching sunbeams,

And the southwind’s sickly breath!

Sirius burns the parching meadows,

Flames upon the embrowning hill,

Dries the foliage of the forest,

And evaporates the rill.

Scarce is seen the lonely floweret,

Save amid the embowering wood;

O’er the prospect dim and dreary,

Drought presides in sullen mood!

 Murky vapours hung in ether,

Wrap in gloom, the sky serene;

Nature pants distressful—silence

Reigns o’er all the sultry scene.

Then amid the limpid waters,

Or beneath the cooling shade,

Let me shun the scorching sunbeams

And the sickly breeze evade.

THE PAST.
No poet, perhaps, in the world is so exquisite in rhythm, or classically pure and accurate in
language, so appropriate in diction, phrase or metaphor as Bryant.

He dips his pen in words as an inspired painter his pencil in colors. The following poem is a
fair specimen of his deep vein in his chosen serious themes. Pathos is pre-eminently his
endowment but the tinge of melancholy in his treatment is always pleasing.

HOU unrelenting Past!

Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,

And fetters, sure and fast,

Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

Far in thy realm withdrawn

Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,

And glorious ages gone

Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

Childhood, with all its mirth,

Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the ground,

And, last, Man’s Life on earth,

Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

Thou hast my better years,

Thou hast my earlier friends—the good—the kind,

Yielded to thee with tears,—

The venerable form—the exalted mind.

My spirit yearns to bring

The lost ones back;—yearns with desire intense,

And struggles hard to wring

Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.

In vain:—thy gates deny

All passage save to those who hence depart;

Nor to the streaming eye

Thou giv’st them back,—nor to the broken heart.

In thy abysses hide

Beauty and excellence unknown;—to thee

Earth’s wonder and her pride

Are gather’d, as the waters to the sea;

Labors of good to man,

Unpublish’d charity, unbroken faith,—

Love, that midst grief began,

And grew with years, and falter’d not in death.

Full many a mighty name

Lurks in thy depths, unutter’d, unrevered;

With thee are silent fame,

Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappear’d.

Thine for a space are they:—

Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;

Thy gates shall yet give way,

Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

All that of good and fair

Has gone into thy womb from earliest time,

Shall then come forth, to wear

The glory and the beauty of its prime.

They have not perish’d—no!

Kind words, remember’d voices once so sweet,

Smiles, radiant long ago,

And features, the great soul’s apparent seat,

All shall come back; each tie

Of pure affection shall be knit again;

 Alone shall Evil die,

And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.

And then shall I behold

Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung,

And her who, still and cold,

Fills the next grave,—the beautiful and young.

THE MURDERED TRAVELER.

HEN spring, to woods and wastes around,

Brought bloom and joy again;

The murdered traveler’s bones were found,

Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch, above him, hung

Her tassels in the sky;

And many a vernal blossom sprung,

And nodded careless by.

The red bird warbled, as he wrought

His hanging nest o’erhead;

And fearless, near the fatal spot,

Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away,

And gentle eyes, for him,

With watching many an anxious day,

Were sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,

The fearful death he met,

When shouting o’er the desert snow,

Unarmed and hard beset;

Nor how, when round the frosty pole,

The northern dawn was red,

The mountain-wolf and wild-cat stole

To banquet on the dead;

Nor how, when strangers found his bones,

They dressed the hasty bier,

And marked his grave with nameless stones,

Unmoistened by a tear.

But long they looked, and feared, and wept,

Within his distant home;

And dreamed, and started as they slept,

For joy that he was come.

Long, long they looked—but never spied

His welcome step again.

 Nor knew the fearful death he died

Far down that narrow glen.

THE BATTLEFIELD.
Soon after the following poem was written, an English critic, referring to the stanza
♦beginning—“Truth crushed to earth shall rise again,”—said: “Mr. Bryant has certainly a rare
merit for having written a stanza which will bear comparison with any four lines as one of the
noblest in the English language. The thought is complete, the expression perfect. A poem of a
dozen such verses would be like a row of pearls, each beyond a king’s ransom.”

♦ ‘begining’ replaced with ‘beginning’

NCE this soft turf, this rivulet’s sands,

Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,

And fiery hearts and armed hands

Encounter’d in the battle-cloud.

Ah! never shall the land forget

How gush’d the life-blood of her brave,—

Gush’d, warm with hope and courage yet,

Upon the soil they fought to save.

Now all is calm, and fresh, and still,

Alone the chirp of flitting bird,

And talk of children on the hill,

And bell of wandering kine, are heard.

No solemn host goes trailing by

The black-mouth’d gun and staggering wain;

Men start not at the battle-cry:

Oh, be it never heard again!

Soon rested those who fought; but thou

Who minglest in the harder strife

For truths which men receive not now,

Thy warfare only ends with life.

A friendless warfare! lingering long

Through weary day and weary year;

A wild and many-weapon’d throng

Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,

And blench not at thy chosen lot;

The timid good may stand aloof,

The sage may frown—yet faint thou not,

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,

The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;

For with thy side shall dwell, at last,

The victory of endurance born.

Truth, crush’d to earth, shall rise again;

The eternal years of God are hers;

But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,

And dies among his worshippers.

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,

When they who help’d thee flee in fear,

Die full of hope and manly trust,

Like those who fell in battle here.

Another hand thy sword shall wield,

Another hand the standard wave,

Till from the trumpet’s mouth is peal’d

The blast of triumph o’er thy grave.

THE CROWDED STREETS.

ET me move slowly through the street,

Filled with an ever-shifting train,

Amid the sound of steps that beat

The murmuring walks like autumn rain.

How fast the flitting figures come;

The mild, the fierce, the stony face—

Some bright, with thoughtless smiles, and some

Where secret tears have left their trace.

They pass to toil, to strife, to rest—

To halls in which the feast is spread—

To chambers where the funeral guest

In silence sits beside the bed.

And some to happy homes repair,

Where children pressing cheek to cheek,

With mute caresses shall declare

The tenderness they cannot speak.

And some who walk in calmness here,

Shall shudder as they reach the door

Where one who made their dwelling dear,

Its flower, its light, is seen no more.

Youth, with pale cheek and tender frame,

And dreams of greatness in thine eye,

Go’st thou to build an early name,

Or early in the task to die?

Keen son of trade, with eager brow,

Who is now fluttering in thy snare,

Thy golden fortunes tower they now,

Or melt the glittering spires in air?

Who of this crowd to-night shall tread

The dance till daylight gleams again?

 To sorrow o’er the untimely dead?

Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?

Some, famine struck, shall think how long

The cold, dark hours, how slow the light;

And some, who flaunt amid the throng,

Shall hide in dens of shame to night.

Each where his tasks or pleasure call,

They pass and heed each other not;

There is one who heeds, who holds them all

In His large love and boundless thought.

These struggling tides of life that seem

In wayward, aimless course to tend,

Are eddies of the mighty stream

That rolls to its appointed end.

NOTICE OF FITZ-GREEN HALLECK.

As a specimen of Mr. Bryant’s prose, of which he wrote much, and also as a sample of his
criticism, we reprint the following extract from a Commemorative Address which he delivered
before the New York Historical Society in February 1869. This selection is also valuable as a
character sketch and a literary estimate of Mr. Halleck.

HEN I look back upon Halleck’s literary life, I cannot help

thinking that if his death had happened forty years
earlier, his life would have been regarded as a bright
morning prematurely overcast. Yet Halleck’s literary
career may be said to have ended then. All that will
hand down his name to future years had already been produced. Who
shall say to what cause his subsequent literary inaction was owing? It
was not the decline of his powers; his brilliant conversation showed that
it was not. Was it then indifference to fame? Was it because he put an
humble estimate on what he had written, and therefore resolved to write
no more? Was it because he feared lest what he might write would be
unworthy of the reputation he had been so fortunate as to acquire?

“I have my own way of accounting for his literary silence in the latter
half of his life. One of the resemblances which he bore to Horace
consisted in the length of time for which he kept his poems by him, that
he might give them the last and happiest touches. Having composed his
poems without committing them to paper, and retaining them in his
faithful memory, he revised them in the same manner, murmuring them
to himself in his solitary moments, recovering the enthusiasm with which
they were first conceived, and in this state of mind heightening the
beauty of the thought or of the expression....

“In this way I suppose Halleck to have attained the gracefulness of

his diction, and the airy melody of his numbers. In this way I believe that
he wrought up his verses to that transparent clearness of expression
which causes the thought to be seen through them without any
interposing dimness, so that the thought and the phrase seem one, and the
thought enters the mind like a beam of light. I suppose that Halleck’s
time being taken up by the tasks of his vocation, he naturally lost by
degrees the habit of composing in this manner, and that he found it so
necessary to the perfection of what he wrote that he adopted no other in
its place.”

A CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

From “The Letters of a Traveler.”
In 1843, during Mr. Bryant’s visit to the South, he had the pleasure of witnessing one of
those antebellum southern institutions known as a Corn-Shucking—one of the ideal occasions of
the colored man’s life, to which both men and women were invited. They were free to tell all the
jokes, sing all the songs and have all the fun they desired as they rapidly shucked the corn. Two
leaders were usually chosen and the company divided into two parties which competed for a prize
awarded to the first party which finished shucking the allotted pile of corn. Mr. Bryant thus
graphically describes one of these novel occasions:

B D ,
South Carolina, March 29, 1843.

UT you must hear of the corn-shucking. The one at which

I was present was given on purpose that I might
witness the humors of the Carolina negroes. A huge
fire of light-wood was made near the corn-house.
Light-wood is the wood of the long-leaved pine, and is
so called, not because it is light, for it is almost the heaviest wood in the
world, but because it gives more light than any other fuel.

The light-wood-fire was made, and the negroes dropped in from the
neighboring plantations, singing as they came. The driver of the
plantation, a colored man, brought out baskets of corn in the husk, and
piled it in a heap; and the negroes began to strip the husks from the ears,
singing with great glee as they worked, keeping time to the music, and
now and then throwing in a joke and an extravagant burst of laughter.
The songs were generally of a comic character; but one of them was set
to a singularly wild and plaintive air, which some of our musicians
would do well to reduce to notation. These are the words:

Johnny come down de hollow.

Oh hollow!

Johnny come down de hollow.

Oh hollow!

De nigger-trader got me.

Oh hollow!

De speculator bought me.

Oh hollow!

I’m sold for silver dollars.

 Oh hollow!

Boys, go catch the pony.

Oh hollow!

Bring him round the corner.

Oh hollow!

I’m goin’ away to Georgia.

Oh hollow!

Boys, good-by forever!

Oh hollow!

The song of “Jenny gone away,” was also given, and another, called
the monkey-song, probably of African origin, in which the principal
singer personated a monkey, with all sorts of odd gesticulations, and the
other negroes bore part in the chorus, “Dan, dan, who’s the dandy?” One
of the songs commonly sung on these occasions, represents the various
animals of the woods as belonging to some profession or trade. For
example—

De cooter is de boatman—

The cooter is the terrapin, and a very expert boatman he is.

De cooter is de boatman.

John John Crow.

De red-bird de soger.

John John Crow.

De mocking-bird de lawyer.

John John Crow.

 De alligator sawyer.

John John Crow.

The alligator’s back is furnished with a toothed ridge, like the edge
of a saw, which explains the last line.

When the work of the evening was over the negroes adjourned to a
spacious kitchen. One of them took his place as musician, whistling, and
beating time with two sticks upon the floor. Several of the men came
forward and executed various dances, capering, prancing, and drumming
with heel and toe upon the floor, with astonishing agility and
perseverance, though all of them had performed their daily tasks and had
worked all the evening, and some had walked from four to seven miles to
attend the corn-shucking. From the dances a transition was made to a
mock military parade, a sort of burlesque of our militia trainings, in
which the words of command and the evolutions were extremely
ludicrous. It became necessary for the commander to make a speech, and
confessing his incapacity for public speaking, he called upon a huge
black man named Toby to address the company in his stead. Toby, a man
of powerful frame, six feet high, his face ornamented with a beard of
fashionable cut, had hitherto stood leaning against the wall, looking upon
the frolic with an air of superiority. He consented, came forward,
demanded a bit of paper to hold in his hand, and harangued the soldiery.
It was evident that Toby had listened to stump-speeches in his day. He
spoke of “de majority of Sous Carolina,” “de interests of de state,” “de
honor of ole Ba’nwell district,” and these phrases he connected by
various expletives, and sounds of which we could make nothing. At
length he began to falter, when the captain with admirable presence of
mind came to his relief, and interrupted and closed the harangue with an
hurrah from the company. Toby was allowed by all the spectators, black
and white, to have made an excellent speech.
CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
 EDGAR ALLEN POE.
.

DGAR Allen Poe, the author of “The Raven,”

“Annabel Lee,” “The Haunted Palace,” “To
One in Paradise,” “Israfel” and “Lenore,” was
in his peculiar sphere, the most brilliant writer,
perhaps, who ever lived. His writings,
however, belong to a different world of thought from that in
which Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier and Lowell lived
and labored. Theirs was the realm of nature, of light, of human
joy, of happiness, ease, hope and cheer. Poe spoke from the
dungeon of depression. He was in a constant struggle with
poverty. His whole life was a tragedy in which sombre shades
played an unceasing role, and yet from out these weird depths
came forth things so beautiful that their very sadness is charming
and holds us in a spell of bewitching enchantment. Edgar
Fawcett says of him:—

“He loved all shadowy spots, all seasons drear;

 All ways of darkness lured his ghastly whim;

Strange fellowships he held with goblins grim,

At whose demoniac eyes he felt no fear.

By desolate paths of dream where fancy’s owl

Sent long lugubrious hoots through sombre air,

Amid thought’s gloomiest caves he went to prowl

And met delirium in her awful lair.”

Edgar Poe was born in Boston February 19th, 1809. His

father was a Marylander, as was also his grandfather, who was a
distinguished Revolutionary soldier and a friend of General
Lafayette. The parents of Poe were both actors who toured the
country in the ordinary manner, and this perhaps accounts for his
birth in Boston. Their home was in Baltimore, Maryland.

When Poe was only a few years old both parents died, within
two weeks, in Richmond, Virginia. Their three children, two
daughters, one older and one younger than the subject of this
sketch, were all adopted by friends of the family. Mr. John Allen,
a rich tobacco merchant of Richmond, Virginia, adopted Edgar
(who was henceforth called Edgar Allen Poe), and had him
carefully educated, first in England, afterwards at the Richmond
Academy and the University of Virginia, and subsequently at
West Point. He always distinguished himself in his studies, but
from West Point he was dismissed after one year, it is said
because he refused to submit to the discipline of the institution.

In common with the custom in the University of Virginia at

that time, Poe acquired the habits of drinking and gambling, and
the gambling debts which he contracted incensed Mr. Allen, who
refused to pay them. This brought on the beginning of a series of
quarrels which finally led to Poe’s disinheritance and permanent
separation from his benefactor. Thus turned out upon the cold,
unsympathetic world, without business training, without friends,
without money, knowing not how to make money—yet, with a
proud, imperious, aristocratic nature,—we have the beginning of
the saddest story of any life in literature—struggling for nearly
twenty years in gloom and poverty, with here and there a ray of
sunshine, and closing with delirium tremens in Baltimore,
October 7th, 1849, at forty years of age.

To those who know the full details of the sad story of Poe’s
life it is little wonder that his sensitive, passionate nature sought
surcease from disappointment in the nepenthe of the intoxicating
cup. It was but natural for a man of his nervous temperament and
delicacy of feeling to fall into that melancholy moroseness
which would chide even the angels for taking away his beautiful
“Annabel Lee;” or that he should wail over the “Lost Lenore,” or
declare that his soul should “nevermore” be lifted from the
shadow of the “Raven” upon the floor. These poems and others
are but the expressions of disappointment and despair of a soul
alienated from happy human relations. While we admire their
power and beauty, we should remember at what cost of pain and
suffering and disappointment they were produced. They are
powerful illustrations of the prodigal expense of human strength,
of broken hopes and bitter experiences through which rare
specimens of our literature are often grown.

To treat the life of Edgar Allen Poe, with its lessons, fully,
would require the scope of a volume. Both as a man and an
author there is a sad fascination which belongs to no other writer,
perhaps, in the world. His personal character has been
represented as pronouncedly double. It is said that Stevenson,
who was a great admirer of Poe, received the inspiration for his
novel, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” from the contemplation of his
double character. Paul Hamilton Hayne has also written a poem
entitled, “Poe,” which presents in a double shape the angel and
demon in one body. The first two stanzas of which we quote:—

“Two mighty spirits dwelt in him:

One, a wild demon, weird and dim,

The darkness of whose ebon wings

Did shroud unutterable things:

One, a fair angel, in the skies

Of whose serene, unshadowed eyes

Were seen the lights of Paradise.

To these, in turn, he gave the whole

Vast empire of his brooding soul;

Now, filled with strains of heavenly swell,

Now thrilled with awful tones of hell:

Wide were his being’s strange extremes,

’Twixt nether glooms, and Eden gleams

Of tender, or majestic dreams.”

It must be said in justice to Poe’s memory, however, that the

above idea of his being both demon and angel became prevalent
through the first biography published of him, by Dr. Rufus
Griswold, who no doubt sought to avenge himself on the dead
poet for the severe but unanswerable criticisms which the latter
had passed upon his and other contemporaneous authors’
writings. Later biographies, notably those of J. H. Ingram and
Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman, as well as published statements from
his business associates, have disproved many of Griswold’s
damaging statements, and placed the private character of Poe in
a far more favorable light before the world. He left off gambling
in his youth, and the appetite for drink, which followed him to
the close of his life, was no doubt inherited from his father who,
before him, was a drunkard.

It is natural for admirers of Poe’s genius to contemplate with

regret akin to sorrow those circumstances and characteristics
which made him so unhappy, and yet the serious question arises,
was not that character and his unhappy life necessary to the
productions of his marvelous pen? Let us suppose it was, and in
charity draw the mantle of forgetfulness over his misguided
ways, covering the sad picture of his personal life from view,
and hang in its place the matchless portrait of his splendid
genius, before which, with true American pride, we may
summon all the world to stand with uncovered heads.

As a writer of short stories Poe had no equal in America. He

is said to have been the originator of the modern detective story.
The artful ingenuity with which he works up the details of his
plot, and minute attention to the smallest illustrative particular,
give his tales a vivid interest from which no reader can escape.
His skill in analysis is as marked as his power of word painting.
The scenes of gloom and terror which he loves to depict, the
forms of horror to which he gives almost actual life, render his
mastery over the reader most exciting and absorbing.

As a poet Poe ranks among the most original in the world.

He is pre-eminently a poet of the imagination. It is useless to
seek in his verses for philosophy or preaching. He brings into his
poetry all the weirdness, subtlety, artistic detail and facility in
coloring which give the charm to his prose stories, and to these
he adds a musical flow of language which has never been
equalled. To him poetry was music, and there was no poetry that
was not musical. For poetic harmony he has had no equal
certainly in America, if, indeed, in the world. Admirers of his
poems are almost sure to read them over and over again, each
time finding new forms of beauty or charm in them, and the
reader abandons himself to a current of melodious fancy that
soothes and charms like distant music at night, or the rippling of
a nearby, but unseen, brook. The images which he creates are
vague and illusive. As one of his biographers has written, “He
heard in his dreams the tinkling footfalls of angels and seraphim
and subordinated everything in his verse to the delicious effect
of musical sound.” As a literary critic Poe’s capacities were of
the greatest. “In that large part of the critic’s perceptions,” says
Duyckinck, “in knowledge of the mechanism of composition, he
has been unsurpassed by any writer in America.”

Poe was also a fine reader and elocutionist. A writer who

attended a lecture by him in Richmond says: “I never heard a
voice so musical as his. It was full of the sweetest melody. No
one who heard his recitation of the ‘Raven’ will ever forget the
beauty and pathos with which this recitation was rendered. The
audience was still as death, and as his weird, musical voice filled
the hall its effect was simply indescribable. It seems to me that I
can yet hear that long, plaintive ‘nevermore.’”

Among the labors of Poe, aside from his published volumes

and contributions to miscellaneous magazines, should be
mentioned his various positions from 1834 to 1848 as critic and
editor on the “Literary Messenger” of Richmond, Virginia, the
“Gentleman’s Magazine” of Philadelphia, “Graham’s Magazine”
of Philadelphia, the “Evening Mirror” of New York, and the
“Broadway Journal” of New York, which positions he
successively held. The last he gave up in 1848 with the idea of
starting a literary magazine of his own, but the project failed,
perhaps on account of his death, which occurred the next year.
His first volume of poems was published in 1829. In 1833 he
won two prizes, one for prose and one for poetic composition,
offered by the Baltimore “Saturday Visitor,” his “Manuscript
Found in a Bottle” being awarded the prize for prose and the
poem “The Coliseum” for poetry. The latter, however, he did not
♦ receive because the judges found the same author had won
them both. In 1838 Harper Brothers published his ingenious
fiction, “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.” In
1840 “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” were issued in
Philadelphia. In 1844 he took up his residence at Fordham, New
York, where his wife died in 1847, and where he continued to
reside for the balance of his life. His famous poem the “Raven”
was published in 1845, and during 1848 and 1849 he published
“Eureka” and “Elalume,” the former being a prose poem. It is
the crowning work of his life, to which he devoted the last and
most matured energies of his wonderful intellect. To those who
desire a further insight into the character of the man and his
labors we would recommend the reading of J. H. Ingram’s
“Memoir” and Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman’s “Edgar Poe and His
Critics,” the latter published in 1863.

♦ ‘recieve’ replaced with ‘receive’

 THE CITY IN THE SEA.

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

O! Death has rear’d himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim west,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines, and palaces, and towers,

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently—

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—

Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—

Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—

Up shadowy, long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie

In each idol’s diamond eye—

Not the gayly-jewell’d dead

Tempt the waters from their bed;

For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass—

No swellings tell that winds may be

Upon some far-off happier sea—

No heavings hint that winds have been

On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave—there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrust aside,

In slightly sinking, the dull tide—

As if their tops had feebly given

A void within the filmy heaven.

The waves have now a redder glow—

The hours are breathing faint and low—

And when, amid no earthly moans,

Down, down that town shall settle hence,

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

ANNABEL LEE.
T was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may

know

By the name of A L ;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my A L —

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful A L ;

So that her highborn kinsman came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre,

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea),

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my A L .

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful A L :

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful A L ;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful A L :

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

 Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

TO HELEN.
The following poem was published first “To ――,” afterwards the title was changed, “To
Helen.” It seems to have been written by Poe to Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman whom many years
afterwards he was engaged to marry. The engagement was, however, broken off. The poem was
no doubt written before his acquaintance with the lady; even before his marriage or engagement
to his wife, and at a time perhaps when he did not expect to be recognized as a suitor by the
unknown woman who had completely captured his heart, in the chance meeting which he here so
beautifully describes.

SAW thee once—once only—years ago:

I must not say how many—but not many.

It was a July midnight; and from out

A full-orbed moon that, like thine own soul, soaring,

Sought a precipitant pathway up through heaven,

There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,

With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,

Upon the upturned faces of a thousand

Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,

Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe—

Fell on the upturned faces of these roses

That gave out, in return for the love-light,

Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death—