18842 'I think that I may go so far as to say, Watson, that I have not lived wholly in vain,' he remarked.
18843 'If my record were closed to-night I could still survey it with equanimity.
18844 The air of London is the sweeter for my presence.
18845 In over a thousand cases I am not aware that I have ever used my powers upon the wrong side.
18846 Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by Nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible.
18847 Your memoirs will draw to an end, Watson, upon the day that I crown my career by the capture or extinction of the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe.'
18848 I shall be brief, and yet exact, in the little which remains for me to tell.
18849 It is not a subject on which I would willingly dwell, and yet I am conscious that a duty devolves upon me to omit no detail.
18850 It was upon the 3rd of May that we reached the little village of Meiringen, where we put up at the Englischer Hof, then kept by Peter Steiler the elder.
18851 Our landlord was an intelligent man, and spoke excellent English, having served for three years as waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.
18852 At his advice, upon the afternoon of the 4th we set off together with the intention of crossing the hills and spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui.
18853 We had strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach, which are about half-way up the hill, without making a small detour to see them.
18854 It is, indeed, a fearful place.
18855 The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house.
18856 The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening, coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip.