"Poe's strong element of power as a writer of short stories," said Bainbridge, "is, I think, his scientific imagination--the same capacity, strange as the statement may appear, that, when directed into another channel, makes a great physicist. It strikes me as inaccurate to say that Newton discovered the law of gravitation. Newton imagined the fact of a law of physical gravitation; and then he proceeded to prove _the_ law of gravitation, accomplishing the discovery by means of a second attribute of genius--viz., tireless mental energy--the possession of a talent for rigorous mental application and severe nervous strain. In the sense that Columbus discovered America--in that sense, Newton discovered the law of gravitation: Columbus imagined an America, and then proceeded to make a physical demonstration of his belief by discovering the Bahamas. The same faculty--scientific imagination--in Poe gave us 'A Descent into the Maelstrom, The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' and other of his tales. And not alone in physics, but in metaphysics, did his imagination open up to him just conceptions; so that in the field of both healthy and morbid mental action his 'intuitive' knowledge was unerring. 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is so true to the real in conception, and so consummate in portrayal, that the more one knows about the mind, the more he inclines to wonder whether these compositions might not have been aided by actual personal experience. Yet these delineations are purely imaginative. Take 'The Imp of the Perverse, The Tell-Tale Heart,' and similar of his stories, not all of which could in reason have come within the experience of one man, and which are undoubtedly grounded upon intuitive suggestion." I asked him which of Poe's tales he thought the best.