"My dear fellow." said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either

side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely

stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We

would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere

commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window

hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the

roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the

strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the won-

derful chains of events, working through generation, and leading

to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its

conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprof-

itable. "............

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