dred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite
wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that
neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by
it.

Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics which
had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in
the butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his papers were
my great crux. He had a horror of destroying documents, especially those
which were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once in
every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange
them; for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs,
the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the 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 table. Thus month after month
his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with
bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which
could not be put away save by their owner. One winter's night, as we
sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest to him that, as he had
finished pasting extracts into his common-place book, he might employ
the next two hours in making our room a 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. I could see
that it was already a third full of bundles of paper tied up with red
tape into separate packages.

"There are cases enough here, Watson," said he, looking at me with
mischievous eyes. "I think that if you knew all that I had in this box
you would ask me to pull some out instead of putting others in."

"These are the records of your early work, then?" I asked. "I have often
wished that I had notes of those cases."

"Yes, my boy, these were all done prematurely before my biographer
had come to glorify me." He lifted bundle after bundle in a tender,
caressing sort of way. "They are not all successes, Watson," said he.
"But there are some pretty little problems among them. Here's the record
of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant,
and