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To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him
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mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
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predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion
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akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly,
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were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He
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was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that
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the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a
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false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe
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and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for
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drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained
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reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely
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adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might
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throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive
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instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not
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be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And
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yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene
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Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
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I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away
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from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred
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interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master
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of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention,
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while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian
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soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old
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books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition,
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the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen
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nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime,
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and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of
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observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those
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mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police.
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From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his
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summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up
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of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and
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finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and
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successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of
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his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of
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the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.
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One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888—I was returning from a
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journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when
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my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered
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door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and
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with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a
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keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his
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extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I
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looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette
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against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his
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head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who
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knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own
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story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created
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dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell
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and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.
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His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think,
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to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved
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me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a
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spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fire
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and looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.
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“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that you have put
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on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.”
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“Seven!” I answered.
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“Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I
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fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me
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that you intended to go into harness.”
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“Then, how do you know?”
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“I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting
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yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless
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servant girl?”
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“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainly have
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been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a
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country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess, but as I
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have changed my clothes I can’t imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary
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Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice, but there,
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again, I fail to see how you work it out.”
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He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands together.
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“It is simplicity itself,” said he; “my eyes tell me that on the inside
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of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is
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scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by
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someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in
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order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double
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deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a
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particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. As
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to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of
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iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right
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forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where
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he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not
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pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.”
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I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his
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process of deduction. “When I hear you give your reasons,” I remarked,
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“the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I
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could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your
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The old 255 mb dataset. not exact size and untrimmed. just a bunch of text. the 512 and 1024 datasets are better
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