my friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer but a composer of no ordinary merit. all the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of holmes the sleuth-hound, holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. in his singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as i have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. the swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as i knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions.