the most bitter weather, he carried no umbrella, neither would he
walk under one, though the rains descended and the floods came!

He was a fatalist pure and simple, and took whatever came to him
in a thoroughly fatalist spirit. "My dear Holmes," he would say,
"why do you break your heart about me? Let me alone, let us be
friends; you are what you are because you can't help it; you
can't be anything else even if you tried. I am what I am for the
same reason. You get your happiness, I get mine. Do me a good
turn when you can, but don't reason with me; let us enjoy each
other's company and take things as they are."

I took him on his own terms; I saw much of him, and when he was
in difficulties I helped him out.

For a time I became his keeper, and when he had chess engagements
to fulfil I used to deliver him carriage paid to his destination
wherever it might be. He always and most punctiliously repaid
any monetary obligation I had conferred upon him, for in that
respect I found him the soul of honour, poor though he was! As I
think of him I see him dancing and yelling in the street,
surrounded by a crowd of admiring East Enders, I see him bruised
and torn hurried off to the police station, I see him standing
before the magistrate awaiting judgment. What compensation
dipsomania gave him I know not, but that he did get some kind of
wild joy I am quite sure. For I see him feverish from one
debauch, but equally feverish with the expectation of another.

With his wife it was another story, and I can see her now full of
anxiety and dread, with no relief and no hope, except, dreadful