Even with the memory of Richard's voice in their ears one of the listeners had shrugged his shoulders, remarking with a bitter laugh that musical as was the poem, especially as rendered by Richard, it was, after all, like most of Poe's other manuscripts, found in a bottle, or more likely "a bottle found in a manuscript," as that crazy lunatic couldn't write anything worth reading unless he was half drunk.

At which St.George had blazed out: "Hush, Bowdoin! You ought to be willing to be blind drunk half your time if you could write one stanza of it! Please let me have it, Richard," and he took the sheet from his friend's hand, that he and Harry might read it at their leisure when they reached home.
Harry's blood had also boiled at the rude thrust.

While under the spell of Richard's voice a cord in his own soul had vibrated as does a glass globe when it responds in perfect harmony to a note from a violin.
He too had a Lenore whose loss had wellnigh broken his heart.

This in itself was an indissoluble bond between them.

Besides, he could understand the poet as Alec and his mother and his Uncle George understood himself.