In 1936, the San Francisco News ran a profile of 75-year-old "pioneer bartender" Jimmy Giusto in which Giusto claimed that Emperor Norton preferred a bag of candy to a drink.

This prompted a letter from a George Murphy calling out Giusto for exaggerating his pioneer bona fides. Murphy claimed to be "a gentleman who drank with 'Emperor' Norton" and went on to assert that the Emperor could not have frequented candy stores, as that would have made the Emperor a "sissy." 

We disagree with Murphy on the last point, as there is a practical reason why Emperor Norton could have had a fondness for candy.

But, the whole episode illustrates how slippery memory can be.