Edgar Allan Poe apologizes to his publishers for drinking too much and asks them to buy an article because he’s “desperately pushed for money” in an 1842 letter acquired by the University of Virginia for an exhibition marking the author’s 200th birthday.

Writing from Philadelphia, Poe blames his friend William Ross Wallace, a poet and lawyer, for making him drink too many “juleps” and for misbehaving on a visit to New York.

“Will you be so kind enough to put the best possible interpretation upon my behaviour while in N-York?,” Poe asks New York publishers J. and Henry G. Langley. “You must have conceived a queer idea of me — but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying.”

I am so stealing that line,
“…but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying.”
now all I need is a friend named Wallace and a good julep recipe.