mptly 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
ret