University of Virginia Library

Letter from Edgar Allan Poe to John Allan, dated October 16, 1831
Manuscript, Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia.

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Baltimore.
Octo: 16th . 1831.

Dear Sir,

It is a long time since I have
written to you unless with an application for
money or assistance. I am sorry that it
is so seldom that I hear from you or even
of you — for all communication seems to be
at an end, and when I think of the long
twenty one years that I have called you
father, and you have called me son, I could
cry like a child to think that it should all
end in this.

You know me too well to think
me interested — if so: why have I rejected your
thousand offers of love and kindness? It is true
that when I have been in great extremity, I have
always applied to you — for I had no other friend.
but it is only at such a time as the present
when I can write to you with the consciousness
of making no application for assistance, that
I dare to open my heart, or speak one word
of old affection. When I look back upon
the past and think of every thing — of how
much you tried to do for me — of your forebearance
and your genersoity, in spite of the most
flagrant ingratitude on my part, I can not
help thinking you myself the greatest fool in

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existence, I am ready to curse the day when I
was born.

But I am fully — truly conscious that all
these better feelings have come too late.
I am not the damned villain even
to ask you to restore me to the twentieth
part of those affections which I have so
deservedly lost, and I am resigned to
whatever fate is alotted me.

I write merely because I am by myself
and have been thinking over old times, and
my only friends, until my heart is full—
At such a time the conversation of new
acquaintance is like ice, and I prefer
writing to you altho' I know that you care
nothing about me, and perhaps will not
even read my letter.

I have nothing more to say — and
this time no favour to ask. Altho I
am wretchedly poor, I have managed to
get clear of the difficulty I spoke of in my
last, and am out of debt, at any rate.