Abitava una volta, in un luogo appartato del Devonshire, certo Goffredo Nickleby, un onesto uomo, che, in età piuttosto avanzata, messosi in capo di ammogliarsi, e non essendo abbastanza giovane o abbastanza ricco da aspirare alla mano di una ereditiera, aveva per pura affezione sposato una vecchia fiamma, la quale a sua volta se l’era preso per la stessa ragione. Così due persone, che non possono permettersi di giocare a carte per denaro, si seggono tranquillamente a tavolino, e giocano una partita per mero piacere. I malevoli, che sogghignano sulla vita matrimoniale possono, forse, osservare a questo punto che sarebbe stato meglio paragonare quella brava coppia a due campioni in una gara di pugilato, i quali, quando la fortuna non è molto propizia e i loro sostenitori sono scarsi, si mettono cavallerescamente ad assaltarsi per il semplice gusto di darsi degli scapaccioni; e per qualche rispetto il paragone veramente reggerebbe, poichè come quell’avventuroso paio di volgari pugilatori dopo manderà un cappello in giro, fidando nel buon cuore degli astanti per procacciarsi i mezzi per far baldoria, così il signor Goffredo Nickleby e la sua compagna, tramontata appena la luna di miele, si misero a guardare avidamente intorno, fidando non poco in una buona occasione per il miglioramento delle loro condizioni. La rendita del signor Nickleby, nel periodo del suo matrimonio, oscillava fra le sessanta e le settanta sterline all’anno.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain...

Una trentina d'anni fa, Marsiglia bruciava un giorno ai raggi infocati del sole.
Nella Francia meridionale, un sole ardente in un giorno canicolare di agosto non era allora un fenomeno più strano di quanto in altri tempi sia stato o di quanto sia adesso. Ogni cosa dentro ed intorno a Marsiglia pareva che avesse sbarrato gli occhi, abbagliata ed abbagliante, al cielo infocato; fino al punto che questo fissarsi ed abbagliarsi a vicenda era ivi divenuto come una mania generale. I forestieri venivano abbagliati dalla accesa bianchezza delle case, dei muri, delle vie, dal bagliore delle strade aride e delle prossime colline il cui verde era stato arso. Tutto intorno in un moto spasmodico sbarrava gli occhi. Tutto, meno le vigne; le quali piegandosi sotto il fardello dei grappoli, occhieggiavano di tratto in tratto, quando l'aura calda e grave muoveva appena le loro languide foglie.
Non spirava un sol filo di vento che facesse una crespa sull'acqua fetida del porto o sul mare ampio e maestoso che stendevasi lungi. Una riga spiccata tra i due colori nero ed azzurro, segnava il confine che l'oceano immacolato non volea passare; ma l'oceano anch'esso se ne stava piano ed immobile come la brutta pozzanghera a cui non mescolava i suoi flutti. Delle barche senza tenda bruciavano la mano che le toccasse; i legni ancorati in porto, cotti sulla vernice dai raggi solari, si gonfiavano in tante pustole; le lastre delle vie non eransi raffreddate, nè giorno nè notte, per mesi intieri...

About the year 1764, some English travellers in Italy, during one of their excursions in the environs of Naples, happened to stop before the portico of the Santa Maria del Pianto, a church belonging to a very ancient convent of the order of the Black Penitents. The magnificence of this portico, though impaired by time, excited so much admiration, that the travellers were curious to survey the structure to which it belonged, and with this intention they ascended the marble steps that led to it.
Within the shade of the portico, a person with folded arms, and eyes directed towards the ground, was pacing behind the pillars the whole extent of the pavement, and was apparently so engaged by his own thoughts, as not to observe that strangers were approaching. He turned, however, suddenly, as if startled by the sound of steps, and then, without further pausing, glided to a door that opened into the church, and disappeared.
There was something too extraordinary in the figure of this man, and too singular in his conduct, to pass unnoticed by the visitors. He was of a tall thin figure, bending forward from the shoulders; of a sallow complexion, and harsh features, and had an eye, which, as it looked up from the cloke that muffled the lower part of his countenance, seemed expressive of uncommon ferocity.

Alice cominciava a sentirsi assai stanca di sedere sul poggetto accanto a sua sorella, senza far niente: aveva una o due volte data un'occhiata al libro che la sorella stava leggendo, ma non v'erano nè dialoghi nè figure, - e a che serve un libro, pensò Alice, - senza dialoghi nè figure?
E si domandava alla meglio, (perchè la canicola l'aveva mezza assonnata e istupidita), se per il piacere di fare una ghirlanda di margherite mettesse conto di levarsi a raccogliere i fiori, quand'ecco un coniglio bianco dagli occhi rosei passarle accanto, quasi sfiorandola.
Non c'era troppo da meravigliarsene, nè Alice pensò che fosse troppo strano sentir parlare il Coniglio, il quale diceva fra se: “Oimè! oimè! ho fatto tardi!” (quando in seguito ella se ne ricordò, s'accorse che avrebbe dovuto meravigliarsene, ma allora le sembrò una cosa naturalissima): ma quando il Coniglio trasse un orologio dal taschino della sottoveste e lo consultò, e si mise a scappare, Alice saltò in piedi pensando di non aver mai visto un coniglio con la sottoveste e il taschino, nè con un orologio da cavar fuori, e, ardente di curiosità, traversò il campo correndogli appresso e arrivò appena in tempo per vederlo entrare in una spaziosa conigliera sotto la siepe.
Un istante dopo, Alice scivolava giù correndogli appresso, senza pensare a come avrebbe fatto poi per uscirne...

THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: "I am not long for this world," and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.
Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to supper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if returning to some former remark of his:
"No, I wouldn't say he was exactly... but there was something queer... there was something uncanny about him. I'll tell you my opinion..."
He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his mind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather interesting, talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him and his endless stories about the distillery.

To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer - excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.

One night - it was on the twentieth of March, 1888 - I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.

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Incipit
Ci sono molte cose, credo, che possono avermi fatto del bene senza che io ne abbia ricevuto profitto e Natale è una di queste…un periodo di gentilezza, di perdono, di carità, di gioia…nel quale uomini e donne sembrano concordi nello schiudere liberamente i cuori serrati e nel pensare alla gente che è al di sotto di loro come se si trattasse realmente di compagni nel viaggio  verso la tomba...”

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?"
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it."
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.
"You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it."
This was invitation enough.
"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week."
"What is his name?"
"Bingley."