[Lost, with her crew of three hundred boys, on the last day of her voyage, March 23, 1876. She foundered off Portsmouth, from which town many of the boys came.] Up with the royals that top the white spread of her! Press her and dress her, and drive through the foam; The Island’s to port, […]

[”Ware Holes!’ is the expression used in the hunting-field to warn those behind against rabbit-burrows or other suck dangers.] A sportin’ death! My word it was! An’ taken in a sportin’ way. Mind you, I wasn’t there to see; I only tell you what they say. They found that day at Shillinglee, An’ ran ‘im […]

Who’s that walking on the moorland? Who’s that moving on the hill? They are passing ‘mid the bracken, But the shadows grow and blacken And I cannot see them clearly on the hill. Who’s that calling on the moorland? Who’s that crying on the hill? Was it bird or was it human, Was it child, […]

Little boy Love drew his bow at a chance, Shooting down at the ballroom floor; He hit an old chaperone watching the dance, And oh! but he wounded her sore. ‘Hey, Love, you couldn’t mean that! Hi, Love, what would you be at?’ No word would he say, But he flew on his way, For […]

Said the king to the colonel, ‘The complaints are eternal, That you Irish give more trouble Than any other corps.’ Said the colonel to the king, ‘This complaint is no new thing, For your foemen, sire, have made it A hundred times before.’

(From ‘The White Company’) The franklin he hath gone to roam, The franklin’s maid she bides at home; But she is cold, and coy, and staid, And who may win the franklin’s maid? There came a knight of high renown In bassinet and ciclatoun; On bended knee full long he prayed – He might not […]

It was the hour of dawn, When the heart beats thin and small, The window glimmered grey, Framed in a shadow wall. And in the cold sad light Of the early morningtide, The dear dead girl came back And stood by his bedside. The girl he lost came back: He saw her flowing hair; It […]

In all the great hosts of France there was only one officer towards whom the English of Wellington’s army retained a deep, steady, and unchangeable hatred. There were plunderers among the French, and men of violence, gamblers, duellists, and roues. All these could be forgiven, for others of their kidney were to be found among […]

It was in the days when France’s power was already broken upon the seas, and when more of her three-deckers lay rotting in the Medway than were to be found in Brest harbour. But her frigates and corvettes still scoured the ocean, closely followed ever by those of her rival. At the uttermost ends of […]

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 […]

The July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable by three cases of interest, in which I had the privilege of being associated with Sherlock Holmes and of studying his methods. I find them recorded in my notes under the headings of “The Adventure of the Second Stain,” “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” […]

There’s a keen and grim old huntsman On a horse as white as snow; Sometimes he is very swift And sometimes he is slow. But he never is at fault, For he always hunts at view And he rides without a halt After you. The huntsman’s name is Death, His horse’s name is Time; He […]

Glancing over the somewhat incoherent series of Memoirs with which I have endeavored to illustrate a few of the mental peculiarities of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have been struck by the difficulty which I have experienced in picking out examples which shall in every way answer my purpose. For in those cases in […]

It was some time before the health of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes recovered from the strain caused by his immense exertions in the spring of ’87. The whole question of the Netherland-Sumatra Company and of the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis are too recent in the minds of the public, and are too intimately […]

One summer night, a few months after my marriage, I was seated by my own hearth smoking a last pipe and nodding over a novel, for my day’s work had been an exhausting one. My wife had already gone upstairs, and the sound of the locking of the hall door some time before told me […]

Shortly after my marriage I had bought a connection in the Paddington district. Old Mr. Farquhar, from whom I purchased it, had at one time an excellent general practice; but his age, and an affliction of the nature of St. Vitus’s dance from which he suffered, had very much thinned it. The public not unnaturally […]

“I have some papers here,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes, as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire, “which I really think, Watson, that it would be worth your while to glance over. These are the documents in the extraordinary case of the Gloria Scott, and this is the message which […]

An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most […]

“I am afraid, Watson, that I shall have to go,” said Holmes, as we sat down together to our breakfast one morning. “Go! Where to?” “To Dartmoor; to King’s Pyland.” I was not surprised. Indeed, my only wonder was that he had not already been mixed up in this extraordinary case, which was the one […]

Sherlock Holmes was a man who seldom took exercise for exercise’s sake. Few men were capable of greater muscular effort, and he was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen; but he looked upon aimless bodily exertion as a waste of energy, and he seldom bestirred himself save […]