BECAUSE
by David N. Cisler

Because of Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle... "Steel True and Blade Straight"... Because of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria of Great Britain and the times she heralded... Because of a simpler, harder yet more courteous and dignified age... Because of 221B Baker Street... Because of the gasogene, the tantalus, the old mouse-coloured dressing gown... Because of the post, transfixed to the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece by a jack-knife... Because of that old, oily clay, the cherry wood and Persian slipper stuffed with shag... Because of gaslight, fog, the clattering of hoof and wheel and seventeen steps... Because of a three-pipe problem and a cried "the game is afoot"... Because Sherlock Holmes is the world's only Consulting Detective... Because Mrs. Hudson will always be their long-suffering housekeeper... Because Lestrade is lean and ferret-faced and is one of the "pick of a bad lot"... Because Mycroft is the British Government and "has his rails and runs on them"... Because Moriarty is "The Napoleon of Crime"... Because of Irene Adler: "To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman."... Because of Watson's "traveling" war wound... Because of the Mrs. Watsons... Because of the hiatus and his triumphant return... Because the Baker Street Irregulars can "go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone"... Because John H. Watson MD is "the one fixed point in a changing age"... Because Sherlock Holmes is "the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known"... Because Monsignor Ronald Arbuthnot Knox did... Because Christopher Darlington Morley did... Because Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett did... Because Edgar W. Smith did... Because William Stuart Baring-Gould did... Because John Bennett Shaw did... Because our friends and acquaintances in Sherlock Holmes do... Because we do... for we "go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone"... Because it is "always 1895"... (c) Copyright 2000, David N. Cisler All Rights Reserved