We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms of No. 221B, Baker Street.

We were both satisfied with the rooms, and agreed to take them there and then.

We gradually began to settle down and get used to our new surroundings.

Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with.

He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular.

It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had breakfast and was gone before I rose in the morning.

Sometimes he went to the laboratory, sometimes to the rooms where students would dissect corpses, sometimes to the most dangerous and criminal areas of the city.

I have never seen anyone so energetic as he was when he was hard at work,

but now and again a reaction would take him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room,

hardly saying a word or moving a muscle from morning to night.

His appearance was such as to strike the attention of anyone who saw him.

In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively thin that he seemed to be considerably taller.

His eyes were sharp and intense, and his thin nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision.

I must confess that I was extremely curious about this man, and tried very hard to get him to tell me something about himself—

which he seemed very reluctant to do.

I had no friends and my health prevented me from going out, so I welcomed this mystery and tried my best to solve it.

He was not studying medicine, nor did he appear to have followed any course of reading which might fit him for a degree in science.

Yet his enthusiasm for certain studies was remarkable,

and his knowledge of certain unusual subjects was so extremely full and detailed that his observations sometimes astonished me.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

He appeared to know next to nothing of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics.

Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he asked the simplest questions such as who he might be and what he had done.

And my surprise reached a peak when I found that he was unaware of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.

“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise.

“Now that I do know it, I will do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty room, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

A fool takes in all the junk he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out,

or at best is mixed up with a lot of other things so that he has difficulty in finding it.

Now the expert worker is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain.

He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, and he has a large collection of these tools, but all in the most perfect order.

The ‘room’ in one’s brain is of fixed and limited size, so there comes a time when, for every addition of knowledge, you forget something that you knew before.

It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts pushing out the useful ones.”

“But the Solar System!” I protested.

“What is it to me?” he said impatiently, “you say that we go round the sun.

If we went round the moon, it would make no difference to me or to my work.”

I was on the point of asking him what that work might be, but something in his manner showed me that the question would be an unwelcome one.

During the first week or so we had no visitors, and I had begun to think that my companion was as friendless a man as I was myself.

Presently, however, I found that he had many acquaintances, and those in the most different classes of society.

There was one little pale rat-faced, dark eyed fellow who was introduced to me as Mr. Lestrade, and who came three or four times in a single week.

One morning a young girl called, fashionably dressed, and stayed for half an hour or more—closely followed by an elderly woman in dirty clothes.

On another occasion an old white-haired gentleman had an interview with my companion, and another time, a railway porter in his uniform.

At such times Sherlock Holmes used to beg for the use of the sitting-room, and I would go back to my bed-room.

He always apologized to me for putting me to this inconvenience.

“I have to use this room as a place of business,” he said, “and these people are my clients.”

Again I had an opportunity of asking him a point-blank question,

and again my delicacy prevented me from forcing another man to confide in me.