1.   The old mariner took a sup of grog and began his tale.

2.   And thus begins the tale of Pierre, Raymond and Jos, three fraternal Quebecers who decided to take on City Hall in a most unusual way.

3.   But this rich, vain and often mendacious amateur archeologist also began another tale of greed and national honor that reverberated for more than a century.

4.   De Ratour begins the tale as a stuffy, lonely, frumpy, mid-level administrator at a museum of middling repute at Wainscott.

5.   He begins his tale in Rwanda.

6.   He began a tale about a girl named Dorothy and how she met a scarecrow.

7.   Ms. Kismaric begins her tale with a deservedly famous daguerreotype by Albert S. Southworth and Josiah Hawes of Boston.

8.   When Jayasinghe had begun her tale on stage, Jones sat there wide-eyed . . . and forgotten.

9.   Yet each one seems to begin a tale from the beginning.

10.   Yan-Zi begins her tale from beyond the grave, in the days just after her death.