The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-11-05

N anomally which often struck
 4 me in the character of my
 A friend Sherlock Holmes was
 that. although in his methods of thought he was the neat
 est and most methodieal of
 mankind, and although also
 he affected certain quiet
 primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that l am in the least conventional in that re- spect myself. The rough-and- tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit. and when l find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of d Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfed by jack-lSnife into the ventury center of his wooden mantlepiece, then l begin to give myself virtuous airs. l have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an oper-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humors, would sit in an armchair with hls hair-trlggef and a hundred Boxer cartridges and pro- oeed to adorn the opposite wall with natriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, felt strongly that neither the atmos- pnere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.
 Our chambers were always fnl or ehe'h- icals and of criminal relics which way of wondering into unlikely positions anu of turning up in the butter-dlsh or III even less desirable places. But ms pa- pers were my great cruX. He had nor TOT of destroying documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases and yet 1t was only once Tn every year or two that we would muster energy to docket and arrange them; for' as l have mentioned somewhere in these ln- coherent memoirs the outbursts Of pas sionate energy when he pefIorneu eiie remarkable feats with which his name IS associated were followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the taple Thus month after month his papers accu- mulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burneu' and which could not be put away save
 
 we sat together by the fire, l ventured to suggest to him that, as he had finished pasting extracts into his commonplace book, he might employ the next two hours in making our room little more habitable He could not deny the justice of my request, so with a rather rueful face he went off to his bedroom, from which he returned presently pulling a large tin box behind him. This he placed in the middle of the floor and, squatting down upon a stool in front of it, he threw back the lid. could see that 1t was all ready third full of bundles of papers tied up with red tape into separate pack ages.
 "There are cases enough here, Wat son." said he looking at me with mis- chievous eyes "I think that if you knew all that 1 had in this box you would ask me to pull some out instead of putting others in"
 work, then?' l asked. "I have often wish ed that 1 had notes of those cases.
 "Yes, my boy. these were all done pre- maturely before my biographer had come to glorify me-" He lifted bundle after bundle in tender. caressing sort of way. "They are not all successes, Watson.'' said he.i But there are some pretty lit tie problems among them. Here's the record of the Tarlton murders. and the case of NambcrrY. the wine merchant and the adrCn TO of the old Russian woman, and la singular affair of the aluminium crutch. as well as a full ac-