This excerpt and picture appeared in the Norwegian Explorers group on Facebook recently. [Reposted from I Hear of Sherlock, so hat-tip to Burt & Scott! -Selena]
Chips writes: These are the word pictures that I fell totally and completely into the world of 1895 and all that followed after.
-Ron, aka the Game is and will forever be Afoot until I cross the Terrace.
“It was a September evening, and not yet seven o’clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. Mud colored clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light,—sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more. I am not subject to impressions, but the dull, heavy evening, with the strange business upon which we were engaged, combined to make me nervous and depressed.” —The Sign of Four
Chips, yes, the picture drew me into the world of SH and JHW as well. And, the words from SIGN are yet another showcase of Watson’s evocative words that, among so many, serve to keep us with the Master for so many decades.
Compliments of the season to you, Mary, and all your dear ones.
Daisy