There is an impression that all of Poe’s stories are gruesome, but this is not true. The most famous of his narratives are his three great detective stories, “The Gold-Bug,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Purloined Letter.” Only the second has the elements of terror in it. “The Gold-Bug” is the original treasure-finding and cipher-reading story. “The Purloined Letter” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” introduce Dupin, the French amateur detective, father of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (who by the way is an excellent son). That Poe was a real and not a sham detective he demonstrated in his analysis of the real case of Marie Roget, in which he used the newspaper reports of a New York mystery and came to conclusions that were afterward verified. Another kind of story which Poe originated was the tale of imaginary science. His stories of this kind are none of them gruesome, with the single exception of “The Case of M. Valdemar.” The first story he wrote of this kind was “Ms. Found in a Bottle.” This was followed by “Hans Pfaal’s Voyage to the Moon,” “A Descent into the Maëlstrom,” “Mellonta Tauta,” and “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade.” A still different type of story is his prose poems such as the beautiful “Eleonora,” and his studies in landscape such as “The Island of the Fay,” “The Domain of Arnheim,” and “Landor’s Cottage.” His terrible and thrilling stories, by which he is best known, have never been surpassed. The best is “William Wilson,” the story of a double; but still more gruesome are “The Black Cat,” “Berenice,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Less horrible and unnatural, but curious and interesting, are “The Man of the Crowd,” “Hop-Frog,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” His “Fall of the House of Usher” is unique. Poe’s life was one of hardship and unhappiness, and he was terribly libelled by his biographer Griswold, who hated him for the scathing reviews Poe had written of his books. So the great poet and story-writer has been painted in the popular mind much blacker than he really is, according to the latest and most authentic evidence. But he was certainly the most original genius America has produced. When he had made a success in one kind of story he did not care to go on writing more stories of that kind, but originated another type.