inform me where she is now.
I think that we may safely say, returned Holmes, that she is
wherever Sir George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that
whatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more than sufficient
punishment.
XII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES
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.
You have erred, perhaps, he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with
the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont
to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a
meditative mood you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and
life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the
task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect
which is really the only notable feature about the thing.
It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter, I
remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I
had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend s
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