Ebook The Stylus

The facts in the case are these:

J. B. Patterson came from Winchester, Va., to Oquawka in September, 1835. A year later, his wife, accompanied by their eight-year-old son, joined him. Mr. Patterson founded the Oquawka Spectator, a weekly publication still in existence. He was a man of fine literary taste and good literary ability; his life of Black Hawk is properly regarded as a standard history of early border times. The son, Edward Howard Norton, was reared most prudently; fond of reading, he was provided with the best books and with the choicest magazine literature. Under the discreet guidance of his parents, he was developed from youth into a manhood of unusual promise.

Young Patterson came of age on January 27, 1849. At that time his father handed over to him the management of the Spectator and of the job-printing office connected therewith. Full of ambition and of confidence, the young man had long cherished the determination to make for himself a place and a reputation in the literary world. Of the many figures conspicuous at that time in American literature he most admired Edgar A. Poe. In the Southern Literary Messenger, in Graham's, in the Pioneer, and in the Broadway Journal, he had read and was fascinated by the work of this remarkable genius.