Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.

There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.

It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.

No violence, gentlemen — no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!

Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H." It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets.

We surely know by some nameless instinct more about our futures than we think we know.

I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of daily life.