Mrs. Allan, whom Poe appears to have regarded with much affection, and who had more influence over him than any one else at this period, died on the 27th of February, 1829, which I believe was just before Poe left Richmond for West Point.  It has been erroneously stated by all Poe’s biographers, that Mr. Allan was now sixty-five years of age, and that Miss Paterson, to whom he was married afterward, was young enough to be his granddaughter.  Mr. Allan was in his forty-eighth year, and the difference between his age and that of his second wife was not so great as justly to attract any observation.

For a few weeks the cadet applied himself with much assiduity to his studies, and he became at once a favorite with his mess and with the officers and professors of the Academy; but his habits of dissipation were renewed; he neglected his duties and disobeyed orders; and in ten months from his matriculation he was cashiered.

He went again to Richmond, and was received into the family of Mr. Allan, who was disposed still to be his friend, and in the event of his good behavior to treat him like a son; but it soon became necessary to close his doors against him forever.  According to Poe’s own statement he ridiculed the marriage of his patron with Miss Paterson, and had a quarrel with her; but a different story,[B] scarcely suitable for repetition here, was told by the friends of the other party.  Whatever the circumstances, they parted in anger, and Mr. Allan from that time declined to see or in any way to assist him.  Mr. Allan died in the spring of 1834, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, leaving three children to share his property, of which not a mill was bequeathed to Poe.

[Footnote B:  The writer of an eulogium upon the life and genius of Mr. Poe, in the Southern Literary Messenger, for March, 1850, thus refers to this point in his history: 

“The story of the other side is different:  and if true, throws a dark shade upon the quarrel, and a very ugly light upon Poe’s character.  We shall not insert it, because it is one of those relations, which we think, with Sir Thomas Browne, should never be recorded,—­being ’verities whose truth we fear and heartily wish there were no truth therein ... whose relations honest minds do deprecate.  For of sins heteroclital, and such as want name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their history.  We do desire no record of enormities:  sins should he accounted new.  They omit of their monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society....  In things of this nature, silence commendeth history:  ’tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein there must never arise a Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell.’”]