57 lines
3.9 KiB
XML
57 lines
3.9 KiB
XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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<!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "book.dtd">
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<?xml-stylesheet href="book.css" type="text/css"?>
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<!-- Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2852 -->
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<!-- Footnotes were added by Péter Jeszenszky -->
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<book>
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<author>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</author>
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<title>The Hound of the Baskervilles</title>
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<chapter>
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<title>Mr. Sherlock Holmes</title>
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<para>Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not
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infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I
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stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him
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the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which
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is known as a “Penang lawyer.” Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an
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inch across. “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S.<footnote>Member of the Royal Colleges of
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Surgeons</footnote>, from his friends of the C.C.H.<footnote>Charing Cross Hospital</footnote>,”
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was engraved upon it, with the date “1884.” It was just such a stick as the
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old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring.</para>
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<para>“Well, Watson, what do you make of it?”</para>
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<para>Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.</para>
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<para>“How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.”</para>
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<para>“I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me,” said he.
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“But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor’s stick? Since we have been so
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unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir
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becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it.”</para>
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<para>“I think,” said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, “that Dr.
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Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed since those who know him
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give him this mark of their appreciation.”</para>
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<para>“Good!” said Holmes. “Excellent!”</para>
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<para>“I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner
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who does a great deal of his visiting on foot.”</para>
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<!-- ... -->
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</chapter>
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<chapter>
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<title>The Curse of the Baskervilles</title>
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<para>“I have in my pocket a manuscript,” said Dr. James Mortimer.</para>
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<para>“I observed it as you entered the room,” said Holmes.</para>
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<para>“It is an old manuscript.”</para>
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<para>“Early eighteenth century, unless it is a forgery.”</para>
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<para>“How can you say that, sir?”</para>
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<para>“You have presented an inch or two of it to my examination all the time that you have
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been talking. It would be a poor expert who could not give the date of a document within
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a decade or so. You may possibly have read my little monograph upon the subject. I put
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that at 1730.”</para>
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<para>“The exact date is 1742.” Dr. Mortimer drew it from his breast-pocket. “This family
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paper was committed to my care by Sir Charles Baskerville, whose sudden and tragic death
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some three months ago created so much excitement in Devonshire<footnote>Former name of
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Devon, a county of England</footnote>. I may say that I was his personal friend as well
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as his medical attendant. He was a strong-minded man, sir, shrewd, practical, and as
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unimaginative as I am myself. Yet he took this document very seriously, and his mind was
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prepared for just such an end as did eventually overtake him.”</para>
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<!-- ... -->
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</chapter>
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<!-- ... -->
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</book>
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