should follow
music as a career, with what excellent results is known to all
musicians. His more important works comprise five cantatas, "The Rose
Maiden," "The Corsair," "Saint Ursula," "The Sleeping Beauty," and "St.
John's Eve," several symphonies, the opera "Thorgrim," considered his
finest work, and over two hundred songs and ballads, many of which have
attained great popularity.

_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes._

XV.--THE ADVENTURE OF THE YELLOW FACE.

BY A. CONAN DOYLE.

In publishing these short sketches, based upon the numerous cases which
my companion's singular gifts have made me the listener to, and
eventually the actor in some strange drama, it is only natural that I
should dwell rather upon his successes than upon his failures. And this
not so much for the sake of his reputation, for indeed it was when he
was at his wits' end that his energy and his versatility were most
admirable, but because where he failed it happened too often that no one
else succeeded, and that the tale was left for ever without a
conclusion. Now and again, however, it chanced that even when he erred
the truth was still discovered. I have notes of some half-dozen cases of
the kind of which "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" and that which
I am now about to recount are the two which present the strongest
features of interest.

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 where there was some professional object to be
served. Then he was absolutely untiring and indefatigable. That he
should have kept himself in training under such circumstances is
remarkable, but his diet was usually of the sparest, and his habits were
simple to the verge of austerity. Save for the occasional use of cocaine
he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the
monotony of existence when cases were scanty and the papers
uninteresting.

One day in early spring he had so far relaxed as to go for a walk with
me in the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out
upon the elms, and the sticky spearheads of the chestnuts were just
beginning to burst into their five-fold leaves. For two hours we rambled
about together, in silence for the mos