“To the man who loves art for its own sake,” remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside _the advertisement sheet of _the Daily Telegraph, “it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that _the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in _these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to _the many causes célèbres and sensational trials in which I have figured but ra_ther to those incidents which may have been trivial in _themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical syn_thesis which I have made my special province.”

“And yet,” said I, smiling, “I cannot quite hold myself absolved from _the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records.”

“You have erred, perhaps,” he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with _the tongs and lighting with it _the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious ra_ther than a meditative mood—“you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to _the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really _the only notable feature about _the thing.”

“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.

“No, it is not selfishness or conceit,” said he, answering, as was his wont, my thoughts ra_ther than my words. “If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing—a thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. _therefore it is upon _the logic ra_ther than upon _the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.”

It was a cold morning of _the early spring, and we sat after breakfast on ei_ther side of a cheery fire in _the old room at Baker Street. A thick fog rolled down between _the lines of dun-coloured houses, and _the opposing windows loomed like dark, shapeless blurs through _the heavy yellow wreaths. Our gas was lit and shone on _the white cloth and glimmer of china and metal, for _the table had not been cleared yet. Sherlock Holmes had been silent all _the morning, dipping continuously into _the advertisement columns of a succession of papers until at last, having apparently given up his search, he had emerged in no very sweet temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings.

“At _the same time,” he remarked after a pause, during which he had sat puffing