SHERLOCK REVIVED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12419, 14 November 1903, Page 5 (Supplement)

SHERLOCK REVIVED.

— -o THE GREAT DETECTIVE NEVER DIED. Mr. Sherlock Holmes never died—as we had good reason to believe when the great detective and Professor Moriarty disappeared from the ledge over the Reichenbach Fall. Nor were his lodgings at Bakerstreet, with their plans, notes, and memoranda, burnt by the Moriarty gang, as Mr. William Gillette informed us in the play at the Lyceum last year.

These facts are made plain by Sir A. Conau Doyle, who, in the " Adventure of the Empty House," once again introduces us to his hero through the medium of the Strand Magazine. Also, Dr. Watson is well and hearty, as excellent a foil as ever to his brilliant friend.

Mr. Holmes' escape was simple. He had a knowledge ol wrestling, which enabled him to throw the professor into the chasm above which they had fought. Knowing that others of the gang were on his trail he determined to seize so excellent an opportunity and disappear for a time. "I stood up." he tells the astonished. Dr. Watson, " and examined the rocky wall behind me. In your picturesque account of the matter, which I read with great interest some months later, yo" assert that the wall was sheer. This was not literally true. A few small footholds presented themselves, and there was some indication of a ledge. The cliff is so high that to climb it at all was an obvious impossibility, and it was equally impossible to make my way along the wet path without leaving some traces. I might, it is true, have reversed my boots, as I have done on similar occasions, but the sight of three sets of tracks in one direction would certainly have suggested a deception. On the whole, then, it was best that I should risk the climb. It was not a pleasant business, Watson. . . but I struggled upwards, and at last I reached a ledge several feet deep and covered with soft, green moss, where I could lie unseen in the most perfect comfort. There I was stretched when you, my dear Watson, and all your following were inves- , tigating in the most sympathetic and enefficient manner the circumstances of my death. At last, when you had all formed your inevitable and totally erroneous conclusions, you departed for the hotel and 1 was left alone." -

During the three years that intervened Mr. Holmes was not idle. He "passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa." Further, he visited Lhassa, and spent some days with the head Lama. He returned to London on reading of a crime which he held to be the work of the chief remaining member of the Moriarty gang.

Mrs. Elinor Glyn, who wrote "The Visits of Elizabeth" and "The Reflections of Ambrosine," has finished a new book. It is entitled "The Damsel and the Sage," and it will be published by Mr. Duckworth. At Swedish weddings among the middle and lower classes the bridegroom carries a whip. This is an emblem of his authority in the domestic circle. DON'T LOOK OLD. With advancing years grey-neis increases. Stop this with Lookyku's Sulphur Kaib Restokeu. which darkens to the format ".clour end preserves the ippsarance. Lock yer's, the English Hair Restorer, keeps oil ravages of time, by darkening th* grey ctreake, ils'o causing growth of Hair. EXPERIMENTAL MOTOR CARS. In buying a "Locomobile" steam car you are not buying something that "we have to arrive" tor experimental purposes. Two years since wo passed that stago, and we now stock the " Locomobile. " We have sold many cars in din colony to uelighted owners. Trials Heuniug, agent, Queen-street, Auckland.