A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Title: A Study in Scarlet.
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Genre: Fiction, literature, detective fiction, mystery, historical fiction.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1887.
Summary: The story features the introduction of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson through mutual friends and a mystery revolving around a corpse found at a derelict house in Brixton. Upon flushing out the murderer, the two are told an incredible story of revenge that starts the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, where John Ferrier and a little girl named Lucy, the only survivors of a small party of pioneers, are rescued by a large party of Latter-day Saints led by Brigham Young on the condition that they adopt and live under their faith. Years later, a now-grown Lucy befriends and falls in love with a man named Jefferson Hope. The Saints cannot allow Lucy to marry out of the faith, and attempt to force her to marry an elder, and John knows the only thing to do is for Lucy to flee with Jefferson. What ensues is a tragic story that will resound for decades to come, and only end in Holmes's study.
My rating: 8.5/10.
♥ That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”
“To forget it!”
“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilled workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
“But the Solar System!” I protested.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently: “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
♥ “That’s rather a broad idea,” I remarked.
“One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,” he answered.
♥ Young Jefferson Hope rode on with his companions, gloomy and taciturn. He and they had been among the Nevada Mountains prospecting for silver, and were returning to Salt Lake City in the hope of raising capital enough to work some lodes which they had discovered. He had been as keen as any of them upon the business until this sudden incident had drawn his thoughts into another channel. The sight of the fair young girl, as frank and wholesome as the Sierra breezes, had stirred his volcanic, untamed heart to its very depths. When she had vanished from his sight, he realized that a crisis had come in his life, and that neither silver speculations nor any other questions could ever be of such importance to him as this new and all-absorbing one. The love which had sprung up in his heart was not the sudden, changeable fancy of a boy, but rather the wild, fierce passion of a man of strong will and imperious temper. He had been accustomed to succeed in all that he undertook. He swore in his heart that he would not fail in this if human effort and human perseverance could render him successful.