The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-14
"The Bells," Valuable Poe Poem

Two thousand one hundred dollars for short poem!
 And paid by one man!
 When Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Bells little did he realize that in the next century. in the year 1903. his lines would be sought after and bid for with rolls of bills representing thousands of dollars. But this thing has come to pass. Press dispatches tell us that the original man uscript of The Bells. written by Poe when he lived in his cottage in Fordham, a literary landmark of New York. was bought last Thursday by George H. Rig by of Philadelphia, Pa., for $2.1OO.
 The manuscript was sold at auction in Philadelphia salesroom and bidders from New York and other cities were present. The first bid was $500, but so active, en- thusiastic and earnest was the competi- ton that only a few minutes elapsed be- fore it was made $1,000. By New York bidders the bid was raised to H175, and MT. Rigby made 1t $l 300.
 4nIs caused a stir in the auction room" reads the dispatch, "and some of the dealers went forward to examine the manuscript further. When they resumed their seats they immediately reopened the bidding. and kept 1t up until MT. Rigsby's bid of $2,lOO stopped his com petitors."
 The original manuscript was 37 1-2 inches in length, eight inches wide and consisted of blue strips of paper pasted together. When first sent to Sartains s Magazine the poem contained only eigh- teen lines. but has since been expanded for each line to rhyme. Fourteen of the lines of the complete and original poems cannot be found.
 According to the dispatch the interest of the sale was augmented by the fact that there is no manuscript of "The Raven" the greatest of Poe's poems, which makes uable relic coming from the hand of this man of genius.
 The poem is as follows in the Rugby manuscript:
 Hear the sledges with the bells-silver What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle | In the icy air of night | While the stars that oversprinkle | All the heavens seem to twinkle l With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time. time.
 In a sort of rhyme, rhyme.
 To the tintinnabulation that so muslcally From the bells. bells. bells. bells,
 Bells, bells. bells
 From the jingling and the twinkling oi
 the bells.
 FOURTH PAGE.
 Hear the tolling of the bells-iron bells What a world of solemn thought theil
 monady compels!
 In the silence of the night
 How we shiver with alright
 At the melancholy menace of their tone For every sound that floats
 From the rust within their throats
 Is a groan.
 And the people-ah, the people
 They that sleep up in the steeple
 All alone.
 And who tolling, tolling. tolling. In that muffled monotone.
 Feel glory in so rolling
 On the human heart a stone
 They are neither man nor woman, They are neither brute nor human, But are pestilential carcases disparte'
 from their souls f Called Ghouls" 5 The manuscript consists of the first an fourth pages only.
 In the original manuscript are note . numerous changes which have peculia and historical significance. In the tweift line of the first page From the bells
 bells, bells, bells' Poe eliminated tn fifth word bells" In the sixth line
 ace of their toner' he substituted men , acc" for "meaning.S% and the eighth lin a was made to read "From the rust withi