"That is my name for the principle that lies hidden in weak human nature—the principle of antagonism to happiness, which, with unholy impishness, tempts man to his own destruction. Don't you think it an apt name?"
"I don't believe I follow you."
"Then let me explain. Did you never, when standing upon some high point, become conscious of an influence irresistibly urging you to cast yourself down? As you listened—fascinated and horrified—to the voice, did you not feel an almost overwhelming curiosity to see what the sensations accompanying such a fall would be—to know the extremest terror of it? Your tempter was the Imp of the Perverse.
"Did you never feel a sense of glee to find that something you had said or done had shocked someone whose good opinion you should have desired? Did you never feel a desire to depart from a course you knew to be to your interest and follow one that would bring certain harm—possible disaster—upon you? Did you never feel like breaking loose from all the restraints which you knew to be for your good—throwing off every shackle of propriety, and right, and decency?—Mr. Graham, did you never feel like throwing yourself to the devil for no reason at all other than the desire to be perverse? Could any desire be more impish?—I will illustrate by my own case, I am in one respect not like other men. An exceptionally high-strung nervous temperament makes alcoholic stimulants poison to me. It works like madness in my brain and in my blood. The glass of wine that you can take with pleasure and perhaps with benefit drives me wild—makes me commit all manner of reckless deeds that in my sane moments fill me with sorrow!—and sometimes produces physical illness followed by depression of spirits, horrible in the extreme. More—an inherited desire for stimulation and the exhilaration produced by wine, makes it well nigh impossible for me, once I have yielded my will so far as to take the single glass, to resist the second, which is more than apt to be followed by a third, and so on. I am fully aware therefore, of the danger that lies for me in a thing harmless to many men, and that my only safety and happiness and the happiness of those far dearer to me than myself, lies in the strictest, most rigid abstinence. Knowing all this, one would suppose that I would fly from this temptation as it were the plague. I do generally. At present, several years have passed since I yielded an inch. But there have been times—and there may be times again—when the Imp of the Perverse will command me to drink and, fully aware of the risk, I will drink, and will go down into hell for a longer or shorter period afterward."
During this lecture upon one of his favorite hobbies, the low voice of The Dreamer was vibrant with earnestness. He spoke out of bitter experience and as he who bore the reputation of a reserved man, laid his soul bare, his vivid eyes held the eyes of his companion by the very intensity—the deep sincerity of their gaze.
Mr. Graham's last conversation with his new editor had dazed him; this one dazed him still more. What manner of man was this? (he asked himself) with whom he had formed a league? He could not say—beyond the fact that he was undoubtedly original—and interesting. Admirable qualities for an editor—both!
The readers of the new monthly thoroughly agreed with him. The history of Edgar Poe's career as editor of The Southern Literary Messenger promptly began to repeat itself with Graham's Magazine. The announcement that he had been engaged as editor immediately drew the attention of the reading world toward Graham's, and it soon became apparent that in the new position he was going to out-do himself. The rapidity with which his brilliant and caustic critiques and essays, and weird stories, followed upon the heels of one another was enough to take one's breath away. He alternately raised the hair of his readers with master-pieces of unearthly imaginings and diverted them with playful studies in autography and exhibitions of skill in reading secret writing.
About the time of his beginning his duties at Graham's he must needs have had a visit from some fairy godmother, the touch of whose enchanted wand left him with a new gift. This was a wonderfully developed power of analysis which he found pleasure in exercising in every possible way. To quote his own words, "As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as bring his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play."
He tried the newly discovered talent upon everything. In his papers on "Autography" he practised it in the reading of character from hand-writing, and in his deciphering of secret writing he carried it so far and awakened the interest and curiosity of the public to such extent that it bade fair to be the ruin of him; for it seemed his correspondents would have him drop literature and devote himself and the columns of Graham's Magazine for the rest of his life, to the solving of these puzzles. Finally, having proved that it was impossible for any of them to compose a cypher he could not read in less time than its author had spent in inventing it, he took advantage of his only safeguard, and positively declined to have anything more to do with them.
But he found a much more interesting way of exercising his power of analysis. In the April number of Graham's he tried it upon a story—"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"—which set all the world buzzing, and drew the interested attention of France upon him. In the next number, while the "Murders" were still the talk of the hour, he made an excursion into the world of pseudo-science the result of which was his thrilling "Descent into the Maelstrom;" but later in the same month he returned to his experiments in analysis—publishing in The Saturday Evening Post an advance review of Charles Dickens' story "Barnaby Rudge," which was just beginning to come out in serial form. In the review he predicted, correctly, the whole development and conclusion of the story. It brought him a letter from Dickens, expressing astonishment, owning that the plot was correct, and enquiring if Edgar Poe had "dealings with the devil."