Let's start with this week's story. A bride eloping
after the wedding is a fun little premise.
THE Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have long ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn the gossips away from this four-year-old drama.
Gossips is the right word, the London of the Holmes era seems very gossipy, sure these are crimes reported in the newspaper, but the way Watson describes the public perception of these events as they were reported makes me feel like the London public treated the news as the soap opera of its times.
"She brought, I understand, a considerable dowry?"
"A fair dowry. Not more, than is usual in my family."
"And this, of course, remains to you, since the marriage is a fait accompli?"
"I really have made no inquiries on the subject."
"Very naturally not.["]
Money? Why I've never even heard of such a thing. I'm very rich, you see.
“I have notes of several similar cases, though none, as I remarked before, which were quite as prompt. My whole examination served to turn my conjecture into a certainty. Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.”
I.. don't even understand what finding a trout in the milk could even be evidence of, circumstantial or not.
I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a Minister in far gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes."
Based neo-imperialist take?
"Ah! Watson," said Holmes, smiling, "perhaps you would not be very gracious either, if, after all the trouble of wooing and wedding, you found yourself deprived in an instant of wife and of fortune. I think that we may judge Lord St. Simon very mercifully, and thank our stars that we are never likely to find ourselves in the same position. Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings."
Awww.