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I have another set of vices when I’m well, but those are the principal ones at present.”
As the weeks went by, my interest in him and my curiosity as to his aims in life gradually deepened and increased.
The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often I endeavoured to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself. Before
“You see,” he explained. “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Sherlock Holmes—his limits Knowledge of Literature.—Nil. " " Philosophy.—Nil. " " Astronomy.—Nil. " " Politics.—Feeble. " " Botany.—Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening. Knowledge of Geology.—Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them. Knowledge of Chemistry.—Profound.
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" " Sensational Literature.—Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century. Plays the violin well. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.
‘Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire.’”
“I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance.
In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one,
but people do not practise it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason sy...
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“Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo Ipse domi simul ac nummos contemplar in arca.”
Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her hand was in mine. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other. I have marvelled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I should go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection. So we stood hand in hand like two children, and there was peace in our
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How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defence.
Wir sind gewohnt dass die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen.’ “Goethe is always pithy.
All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover
he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.
“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago.
“You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.
‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico,’ you know, and my poor little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid.
“Still, I confess that I miss my rubber. It is the first Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my rubber.”
Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible imbecility!” he cried.
“Yes,” I answered, laughing, “it was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud-stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis.”
marked with every evil passion,
Holmes chuckled heartily. “Your conversation is most entertaining,”
This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.”
“It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,” I remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend’s singular character.
sonic secret sorrow,
“Because I made a blunder, my dear Watson—which is, I am afraid, a more common occurrence than anyone would think who only knew me through your memoirs.
two men who know each other intimately.
“Watson,” said he, “if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”
the personal equation, as the astronomers have dubbed it.
such a stormy petrel as I am.”
DURING MY LONG and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life. This reticence upon his part had increased the somewhat inhuman effect which he produced upon me, until sometimes I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy as he was preeminent in intelligence.
It was after tea on a summer evening, and the conversation, which had roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes of the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, came round at last to the question of atavism and hereditary aptitudes. The point under discussion was, how far any singular gift in an individual was due to his ancestry and how far to his own early training.
a lovely thing a rose is!”
“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,” said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. “It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the
flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”
the lithe figure of my friend.
It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light.
a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean.
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
“I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,”
“Well,” said I, “you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it selfishness.”
It was at such moments that for an instant he ceased to be a reasoning machine, and betrayed his human love for admiration and applause. The same singularly proud and reserved nature which turned away with disdain from popular notoriety was capable of being moved to its depths by spontaneous wonder and praise from a friend.
Without his scrap-books, his chemicals, and his homely untidiness, he was an uncomfortable man.
Not one of your cases, Watson—mental, not physical.
By Jove! my dear fellow, it is nearly nine, and the landlady babbled of green peas at seven-thirty. What with your eternal tobacco, Watson,
and your irregularity at meals, I expect that you will get notice to quit, and that I shall share your downfall—not, however, before we have solved the problem of the nervous tutor, the careless servant, and the three enterprising students.”
“I have forged and tested every link of my chain, Professor Coram, and I am sure that it is sound.
