“Of the facts, that I myself have been long and dangerously ill, and that my illness has been a well-understood thing among my brethren of the press, the best evidence is afforded by the innumerable paragraphs of personal and literary abuse with which I have been latterly assailed.  This matter, however, will remedy itself.  At the very first blush of my new prosperity, the gentlemen who toadied me in the old, will recollect themselves and toady me again.  You, who know me, will comprehend that I speak of these things only as having served, in a measure, to lighten the gloom of unhappiness, by a gentle and not unpleasant sentiment of mingled pity, merriment and contempt.  That, as the inevitable consequence of so long an illness, I have been in want of money, it would be folly in me to deny—­but that I have ever materially suffered from privation, beyond the extent of my capacity for suffering, is not altogether true.  That I am ‘without friends’ is a gross calumny, which I am sure you never could have believed, and which a thousand noble-hearted men would have good right never to forgive me for permitting to pass unnoticed and undenied.  Even in the city of New York I could have no difficulty in naming a hundred persons, to each of whom—­when the hour for speaking had arrived—­I could and would have applied for aid with unbounded confidence, and with absolutely no sense of humiliation.  I do not think, my dear Willis, that there is any need of my saying more.  I am getting better, and may add—­if it be any comfort to my enemies—­that I have little fear of getting worse.  The truth is, I have a great deal to do; and I have made up my mind not to die till it is done.  Sincerely yours,

“December 30th, 1846.  EDGAR A. POE.”

This was written for effect.  He had not been ill a great while, nor dangerously at all; there was no literary or personal abuse of him in the journals; and his friends in town had been applied to for money until their patience was nearly exhausted.  His wife, however, was very sick, and in a few weeks she died.  In a letter to a lady in Massachusetts, who, upon the appearance of the newspaper articles above quoted, had sent him money and expressions of sympathy, he wrote, under date of March 10, 1847: 

“In answering your kind letter permit me in the first place to absolve myself from a suspicion which, under the circumstances, you could scarcely have failed to entertain—­a suspicion of discourtesy toward yourself, in not having more promptly replied to you....  I could not help feeling that should you see my letter to Mr. Willis—­in which a natural pride, which I feel you could not blame, impelled me to shrink from public charity, even at the cost of truth, in denying those necessities which were but too real—­I could not help fearing that, should you see this letter, you would yourself feel pained at having caused me pain-at having been the means of giving further publicity to