_A Case of Identity_


"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 can 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 wonderful
chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most
_outré_ results, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and
foreseen conclusions, most stale and unprofitable."

"And yet I am not convinced of it," I answered. "The cases which come to
light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough. We
have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet
the result is, it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor artistic."

"A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic
effect," remarked Holmes. "This is wanting in the police report, where
more stress is laid perhaps upon the platitudes of the magistrate than
upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the
whole matter. Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the
commonplace."

I smiled and shook my head. "I can quite understand your thinking so," I