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Text: Edgar Allan Poe to John Allan November 18, 1831








Balt:
Novr 18. 1831,



    My Dear Pa,
 
    I am in the greatest distress and have no other friend on earth to apply to except yourself if you refuse to help me I know not what I shall do. I was arrested eleven days ago for a debt which I never expected to have to pay, and which was incurred as much on Hy’s account as on my own about two years ago.
 
    I would rather have done any thing on earth than apply to you again after your late kindness — but indeed I have no other resource, and I am in bad health, and unable to undergo as much hardships as formerly or I never would have asked you to give me another cent.
 
    If you will only send me this one time $80, by Wednesday next, I will never forget your kindness & generosity. — if you refuse God only knows what I shall do, & all my hopes & prospects are ruined forever —


Yours affectionately
        E A Poe


I have made every exertion but in vain.







Notes:

This letter is printed here with permission from the Valentine Museum in Richmond, Virginia. A photographic facsimile of this letter was published in Mary Newton Stannard, Edgar Allan Poe Letters Till Now Unpublished in the Valentine Museum Richmond, Virginia, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1925.
 
[S:1 - MS, 1831]