broke
again. I went through precisely the same scene.... Then again--again--
and even once again at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the
agonies of her death--and at each accession of the disorder I loved
her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity.
But I am constitutionally sensitive--nervous in a very unusual degree.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these
fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank--God only knows how often or
how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to
the drink rather than the drink to the insanity. I had, indeed, nearly
abandoned all hope of a permanent cure, when I found one in the
_death_ of my wife. This I can and do endure as becomes a man. It was
the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope and despair which I
could _not_ longer have endured, without total loss of reason."

The poet at this period was residing in a small but elegant little home,
superintended by his ever-faithful guardian, his wife's mother--his own
aunt, Mrs. Clemm, the lady whom he so gratefully addressed in after
years in the well-known sonnet, as "more than mother unto me." But a
change came o'er the spirit of his dream! His severance from 'Graham's',
owing to we know not what causes, took place, and his fragile schemes of
happiness faded as fast as the sunset. His means melted away, and he
became unfitted by mental trouble and ill-health to earn more. The
terrible straits to which he and his unfortunate beloved ones were
reduced may be comprehended after perusal of these words from Mr. A. B.
Harris's reminiscences.

Referring to the poet's residence in Spring Gardens, Philadelphia, this
writer says:

"It was during their stay there that Mrs. Poe, while singing one
evening, ruptured a blood-vessel, and after that she suffered a
hundred deaths. She could not bear the slightest exposure, and needed
the utmost care; and all those conveniences as to apartment and
surroundings which are so important in the case of an invalid were
almost matters of life and death to her. And yet the room where she
lay for weeks, hardly able to breathe, except as she was fanned, was a
little narrow place, with the ceiling so low over the narrow bed that
her head almost touched it. But no one dared to speak, Mr. Poe was so
sensitive and irritable; 'quick as steel and flint,' said one who knew
him in those