A Study in Scarlet — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A STUDY IN SCARLET. 7 London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the empire are frresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spend- ing such money as I had considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances be- come, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel, and to take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile. On the very day that I had come to this conclusion, I was standing at the Criterion bar, when some one tapped me on the shoulder, <nd turning round I recog- nized young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Bart’s. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man. In old days Stamford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed him with en- thusiasm, and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy, I asked him to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off to- gether in a hansom. ‘What ever have you been doing with yourself, Wat- son ?” he asked, in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London streets. “ You areas thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.” I gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time that we reached our destination. GOMiGcsdoo