The Devil’s Agents May Be Of Flesh

Several Incidents In My Life Have Convinced Me Of Spiritual Interposition - Of The Promptings Of Some Beneficent Force Outside Ourselves, Which Tries To Help Us Where It Can.

Everything Comes In Circles. [...] The Old Wheel Turns, And The Same Spoke Comes Up. It's All Been Done Before, And Will Be Again.

A Hound It Was, An Enormous Coal-black Hound, But Not Such A Hound As Mortal Eyes Have Ever Seen. Fire Burst From Its Open Mouth, Its Eyes Glowed With A Smouldering Glare, Its Muzzle And Hackles And Dewlap Were Outlined In Flickering Flame. Never In The Delirious Dream Of A Disordered Brain Could Anything More Savage, More Appalling, More Hellish Be Conceived Than That Dark Form And Savage Face Which Broke Upon Us Out Of The Wall Of Fog.

His Incredible Untidiness, His Addiction To Music At Strange Hours, His Occasional Revolver Practice Within Doors, His Weird And Often Malodorous Scientific Experiments, And The Atmosphere Of Violence And Danger Which Hung Around Him Made Him The Very Worst Tenant In London.

If I Had Never Touched Holmes, Who Has Tended To Obscure My Higher Work, My Position In Literature Would At The Present Moment Be A More Commanding One.