dr. john carter and left his walking stick here at dr. carter's house, taking the sword cane with him instead. we don't know why poe tooking the sword cane, what happened to it. we do know he was going to philadelphia the next morning. we have this letter, one of the last letters he ever wrote from september 18th, 1849, and he's writing to a poet in philadelphia whose book he want to edit. he's going to make $100. so he could really use this money and it would go a long ways towards helping him with his upcoming marriage. but unfortunately he caught the steam ship from richmond to baltimore, which was about a two-day trip. he was catching the train in baltimore to philadelphia but he just disappeared for five days. we don't know his whereabouts until he was found at ryan's fourth ward polls. it was a polling place on a voting day and poe was found semiconscious dressed in somebody else's clothes. cheap, ill fitting rags, nothing like he would have worn and people were at a loss to figure out what happened. one of the theories was that he