The right answer is letter b: <em>the houses in both passages are described as having an air of rot, gloom and loneliness</em>.
Poe's character describes Mr. Roderick Usher's house as one he cannot help to consider a "melancholy view" where "there was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart" . Said house caused an "insufferable gloom" in the observer's spirit.
In a similar thread of thought, Bierce's tale about the Manton house describes its looks as sufficient to affirm it is<em> "haunted"</em>. He describes the house as <em>"slowly falling into decay"</em> as <em>"cobwebs weave in the angles of the walls like strips of rotting lace..."</em> all while standing <em>"a little way off the loneliest reach of the Marshall and Harriston road". </em>
Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819.
