The rest of the history is one of occasional indulgence in intoxicants and rarely intermitting mental aberration. It is to him during these last months of his unhappy career that the least charity has been extended. He conducted a courtship of three ladies at once, making to each like frantic protestations of love, the same despairing appeals to each to become his savior from some dreadful impending fate. In June, ’49, he departed for Richmond, for what purpose is unknown. In Philadelphia he appeared the subject of a hallucination that he was pursued by conspirators, and had his mustache taken off for the sake of disguise. In Richmond he remained until the latter part of September, writing some and renewing old acquaintances. During these three or four months he was twice known to be overcome and in danger of his life from drink; he was credited with having been almost continuously “in a state of beastly intoxication” during the whole time. Mrs. Weiss thinks that this was one of the brightest and happiest seasons of his life; if so, it was light at its eventide. The return voyage is shrouded—that is the fit word—shrouded in mystery and controversy. This seems to be true—that he was taken up unconscious in Baltimore at daybreak, taken to a hospital, and died there at midnight of the same day (October 7, 1849). It is also known that he left Richmond by boat on the evening of the 4th, he then being sober and cheerful. In proper course he must have arrived in Baltimore the night of the 5th or morning of the 6th; he was himself then, for he removed his trunk to a hotel. There was thus left less than twenty-four hours in which for him to travel to Havre de Grace and back, miss the New York connection, vote eleven times in the Baltimore city election, go through the “prolonged debauch,” fall into the delirium, and lapse into the comatose state in which he was found—as described in most of his biographies; and he immediately thereafter is found to have no smell of liquor about him, no tremor, and is conversing rationally when roused to consciousness. The event was announced by Griswold in the _Tribune_ with this brutal bluntness: “Edgar Allan Poe is dead. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. He had few or no friends.” But the _Southern Literary Messenger_ said: “Now that he is gone, the vast multitude of blockheads may breathe again.” Griswold simply elected himself mouthpiece of that host.