where the sunlight falls in white patches, are gray and yellow cats.
The cats of Spring Garden street are plump and of high cheer and they remind me of the most famous cat that ever lived in that neighborhood. She was a big tortoise-shell puss called Catterina (Kate for short) and she lived in a little three-story brick cottage on Brandywine street, which is just off Seventh street behind the garage that now stands on the northwest corner of Seventh and Spring Garden. Catterina played a distinguished, even a noble, part in American literature. I am the gladder to celebrate her because I do not believe any one has ever paid her a tribute before. You see, she happened to be the particular pet and playmate of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Allan Poe.
It is curious that Philadelphia pays so little honor to that house on Brandywine street, which is associated with the brief and poignant domestic happiness of that brilliant and tragic genius. Poe lived in Philadelphia from 1838 until 1844, and during the last two or three years of his stay he occupied the little brick house on Brandywine street. One of those who visited it then described it as "a small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods far from the center of the town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius." What is now only a rather dingy back yard was then a little garden full of roses, grape-
