Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" In writing a story of this nature, Poe would have considered such historical examples as the Black Death or the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages as well as the cholera epidemics that ravaged Philadelphia in the 1790's and Baltimore in his own lifetime. However, "The Wife of His Youth" follows Mr. Ryder, a bi-racial man who was born and reared free before the Civil War. He heads the "Blue Veins Society", a social organization for colored people in a northern town; the membership consists of people with a high proportion of European ancestry, who look more white than black. The organization's name stemmed from the joke that one would have to be so white (to be a member) that veins could be seen through the skin.
