Holmes in his most
natural and social mood:--
296 BEACON STREET, February 11, 1872.
My dear Mr. Fields,--On Friday evening last I white-cravated myself,
took a carriage, and found myself at your door at 8 of the clock P. M.
A cautious female responded to my ring, and opened the chained portal
about as far as a clam opens his shell to see what is going on in
Cambridge Street, where he is waiting for a customer.
Her first glance impressed her with the conviction that I was a
burglar. The mild address with which I accosted her removed that
impression, and I rose in the moral scale to the comparatively
elevated position of what the unfeeling world calls a "sneak-thief."
By dint, however, of soft words, and that look of ingenuous simplicity
by which I am so well known to you and all my friends, I coaxed her
into the belief that I was nothing worse than a rejected contributor,
an autograph collector, an author with a volume of poems to dispose
of, or other disagreeable but not dangerous character.
She unfastened the chain, and I stood before her.
"I calmed her fears, and she was calm
And told"
me how you and Mrs. F. had gone to New York, and how she knew nothing
of any literary debauch that was to come off under your roof, but
would go and call another unprotected female who knew the past,
present, and future, and could tell me why this was thus, that I had
been lured from my fireside by the ignis fatuus of a deceptive
invitation.
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