Yet in all this Poe simply did better what his predecessors had done already. His harmonising of scene, of style, was no new thing. The narrative form itself needed more artistic adjustment. To begin with what now seems to us the commonest and most obvious defect, the narrative mood and the narrative progress must not be disturbed by introductory exposition. Not only the ruck of writers for the annuals, but even Irving, but even sometimes Hawthorne, seem unable to begin a story forthwith. They seem fatally constrained to lay down first a bit of essay. Whether it be an adjuration to the patient reader to mind the import, or a morsel of philosophy for a text, or a bridge from the general to the particular, or an historical summary, or a humorous intimation, it is like the juggler’s piece of carpet; it must be laid down first. Poe’s intolerance of anything extraneous demanded that this be cut off. And though since his time many worthy tales have managed to rise in spite of this inarticulate member, the best art of the short story, thanks to his surgery, has gained greatly in impulse. One can almost see Poe experimenting from tale to tale. In _Berenice_ he charged the introduction with mysterious suggestion; that is, he used it like an overture; he made it integral. In _Morella_, the point of departure being similar, the theme is struck more swiftly and surely, and the action begins more promptly. In _King Pest_, working evidently for more rapid movement, he began with lively description. _Metzengerstein_ recurs to the method of _Berenice_; but _Ligeia_ and _Usher_, the summit of his achievement, have no introduction, nor have more than two or three of the typical tales that follow. “True! nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous, I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses--not destroyed--not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily--how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” _The Tell-Tale Heart_ (_1843_). Every one feels the force for this tale of this method of beginning; and to many story-readers of to-day it may seem obvious; but it was Poe, more than any one else, who taught us to begin so.