"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 an unfounded report--at all events to the report of a wretchedness which I had thought it prudent (since the world regards wretchedness as a crime) so publicly to disavow. In a word, venturing to judge your noble nature by my own, I felt grieved lest my published denial might cause you to regret what you had done; and my first impulse was to write you, and assure you, even at the risk of doing so too warmly, of the sweet emotion, made up of respect and gratitude alone, with which my heart was filled to overflowing. While I was hesitating, however, in regard to the propriety of this step, I was overwhelmed by a sorrow so poignant as to deprive me for several weeks of all power of thought or action. Your letter, now lying before me, tells me that I had not been mistaken in your nature, and that I should not have hesitated to address you; but believe me, my dear Mrs. L----, that I am already ceasing to regard those difficulties or misfortunes which have led me to even this partial correspondence with yourself." For nearly a year Mr. Poe was not often before the public, but he was as industrious, perhaps, as he had been at any time, and early in 1848 advertisement was made of his intention to deliver several lectures, with a view to obtain an amount of money sufficient to establish his so-long-contemplated monthly magazine. His first lecture--and only one at this period--was given at the Society Library, in New York, on the ninth of February, and was upon the cosmogony of the Universe: it was attended by an eminently intellectual auditory, and the reading of it occupied about two hours and a half; it was what he afterward published under the title of "Eureka, a Prose Poem."