"MY DEAR WATSON!".

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 184, 6 August 1927, Page 8

"MY DEAR WATSON!".

The i I felt at opening the last of the Sherlock Holmes volumes* is a slight twinge compared with the positive pain I experienced when Sherlock and Moriarty went over that Alpine cliff, locked in each other's arms, many years ago. I think I could go on reading about Holmes for ever—with suitable intervals for rest and refreshment—but there is not the uniform attraction about these later stories that there was about the "Adventures" and the "Memoirs." The mannerisms of Holmes and Watson are more irritating. Here and there in this later volume, indeed, there are passages that remind one of the many parodies of the stories. "It happened," says Holmes, in a story told here by himself, "that at the moment I was clearing up the case which my friend Watson has described as that of the Abbey School, in which the Duke of Cireyminster was so deeply involved. I had also a commission from the Sultan of Turkey which called for immediate action, as political consequences of the gravest kind might arise from its neglect." Moreover, Watson never seems to learn anything from the great man. In another of these new stories the problem is a University professor who was discovered at night progressing on hands and feet, but sprang up suddenly on being detected. "Well, Watson, what do* you make of that?" "Lumbago, possibly. I have known a severe attack make a man walk in just such a way, and nothing could be more trying to the temper." "Good, Watson! you always keep us Mat footed on the ground. But we can hardly accept lumbago, since, he was able to stand erect in a moment." In the same story Watson remarks sent cut iously, "We can but try." "Excellent, Watson! Compound of the Busy Bee and Excelsior. We can but try—the motto for the firm." Holmes so often treats Watson as if they were si\ih form boy and fag that I wonder Watson didn't brain him with the coffee-pot long ago. There are one or two stories in "The CaseBook" that will probably be ranked by admirers among the best. There are others—"but, never mind, Holmes is always Holmes, and his final bow—as we are assured it is—should be an occasion for a grateful salute. Is there another character in English fiction since the days of Dickens so well known to the average man? And look at the imitations of him. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has said that if all the writers of sensational stories contributed to a memorial to Edgar Allan Poe, that master would have a magnificent monument. If all the imitators of Conan Doyle subscribed to the funds of the Spiritualists, the cause nearest to his heart would have a fine sum for the conversion of the sceptical. —CYRAXO. *"Tlip Onse-Bnnk of, Sherlock Holmes," by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (Murray's Imperial Library.)