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"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock

Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of The Daily

Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest

manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is

pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped

this truth that in these little records of our cases which you

have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say,

occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much

to the many causes celebres and sensational trials in which I

have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been

trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those

faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made

my special province."

"And yet," said I, smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolved

from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my

records."