said. "Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to
everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are
brought in contact with all that is strange and _bizarre_. But here"--I
picked up the morning paper from the ground--"let us put it to a practical
test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. 'A husband's cruelty to
his wife.' There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it
that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other
woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the unsympathetic sister
or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude."

"Indeed your example is an unfortunate one for your argument," said
Holmes, taking the paper, and glancing his eye down it. "This is the
Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up
some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler,
there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had
drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false
teeth and hurling them at his wife, which you will allow is not an action
likely to occur to the imagination of the average story teller. Take a
pinch of snuff, doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in
your example."

He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the center
of the lid. Its splendor was in such contrast to his homely ways and
simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.

"Ah!" said he, "I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is a
little souvenir from the King of Bohemia, in return for my assistance in
the case of the Irene Adler papers."

"And the ring?" I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which sparkled