Mr. E. A. Poe c/o Ms. M. Clemm 203 North Amity Street December 20, 1838 Knowing, as I do, your acquaintance with the night; and, finding myself gripped with the terrible need to distribute these recent events to one who may find some translation of their bizarreness and not overly suffer thereby, my sole thought upon escape was to immediately inscribe them for you. Such was the fall of the house of Escher. As I hurried from that awful structure it slipped into the swamp, a monument to the decayed greatness of its last master. Think me not too deranged. May this be fit for some use by you.