Midnight Dreary is a marvel, and one of the ways in which it is marvelous is in how it makes the society in which Poe lived seem natural and everyday, as if it were the reader's own. Some of the problems of that society are still problems in today's society.

That there was a temperance society in Richmond attests to that. In those days, an alcoholic was asked "to take the pledge" and forswear ever imbibing alcohol again.

That Poe did this in a very public way that led to newspaper accounts and to the temperance organization itself cheering its winning over a very famous man, means, as Walsh points out, that taking the pledge was a very serious matter for him.

Walsh is very particular in his discussion of Poe's drinking: "Once and for all, let it be stated that Poe was not a drunkard...