the
bills announce my name. But he comes half drunk and in a talkative
mood, sometimes in a contradictory mood, but generally good tempered.
He punctuates my speech with a loud and emphatic "Hear! hear!" and often
informs the audience that "what Mr. Holmes says is quite true!" The
attendants cannot keep him silent, he tells them that he is my friend;
he makes some claim to being my patron.

Poor fellow! I speak to him kindly, but incontinently give him the slip,
for I retire by a back way, leaving him to argue my disappearance in no
friendly spirit with the attendants. Yet I have spent many happy hours
with him when, as sometimes happened, he was "in his right mind."

I, would like to dwell on the wonders of this man's strange and fearsome
life, but I hasten on to tell of a contrast, for my friends present many
contrasts.

I was hurrying down crowded Bishopsgate at lunch time, lost in thought,
when I felt my hand grasped and a well-known voice say, "Why! Mr.
Holmes, don't you know me?"

Know him! I should think I do know him; I am proud to know him, for I
venerate him. He is only a french polisher and by no means handsome, his
face is furrowed and seamed by care and sorrow, his hands and clothing
are stained with varnish. Truly he is not much to look at, but if any
one wants an embodiment of pluck and devotion, of never-failing patience
and magnificent love, in my friend you shall find it!

Born in the slums, he sold matches at seven years of age; at eight he
was in an industrial school; his father was dead, his mother a drunkard;
home he had none!

Leaving school at sixteen he became first a gardener's assistant, then
a gentleman's servant; in this occupation he saved some money with
which he apprenticed himself to french polishing. From apprentice
to journeyman, from journeyman to business on his own account, were
successive steps; he married, and that brought him among my many
acquaintances.

He had a nice home, and two beautiful children, and then that great
destroyer of home life, drink! had to be reckoned with. So he came to
consult me. She was a beautiful and cultured woman and full of remorse.

The stained hands of the french polisher trembled as he signed
a document by which he agreed to pay L1 per week for his wife's
maintenance in an inebriate home for twelve months where she might have
her babe with her. Bravely he did his part, and at the end of the year
he brought her back to a new and better hom