True!-Nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

-Edgar Allen Poe, the Tell-Tale Heart.

This sentence screams agitation. It's as if a harried man just burst into the room and started speaking loudly, eyes wild. "True!" he exclaims, heading off questions, comments and accusations. "Nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous," he continues. Whenever a word, phrase or feeling is repeated, it means pay attention. This phrase hammers in deeper the feeling of crazed anxiety we get from this sentence. You could argue this same sentence could be spoken by a calm and collected gentleman. However, the exclamation point and the repetition of emphasis words leads me to the harried, slightly crazy man conclusion. "very nervous I had been and am;" from this we can deduce this hand-wringing, darting-eye excitement is not sudden, or even recent. "but why will you say that I am mad?" I doubt this takes much explaining. He obviously does not consider himself crazy, and indeed, strongly opposes all who say he is. By the emphasis on the 'will,' we can assume he has been referred to as mad many times, and is growing tired of the label. As a parting observation, short story first sentences tend not to need the instant 'hook,' that novels do. Although they have less time to develop, the reader may be more inclined to commit to reading the entire work due to its length.