Адаптированный текст рассказа А. К. Дойла «Обряд дома Месгрейвов» на английском языке. Учебное пособие - страница 2

00:00:47 – > But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle,

00:00:53 – > his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper,

00:00:56 – > and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece,

00:01:03 – > then I begin to give myself virtuous airs.

00:01:06 – > I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime;

00:01:12 – > and when Holmes, in one of his queer humours,

00:01:15 – > would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges,

00:01:20 – > and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks,

00:01:26 – > I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.

00:01:33 – > Our chambers were always full of chemicals

00:01:35 – > and of criminal relics which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish

00:01:42 – > or in even less desirable places.

00:01:44 – > But his papers were my great crux.

00:01:47 – > He had a horror of destroying documents,

00:01:50 – > especially those which were connected with his past cases,

00:01:53 – > and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them;

00:01:59 – > for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs,

00:02:03 – > the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated

00:02:09 – > were followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books,

00:02:15 – > hardly moving save from the sofa to the table.

00:02:19 – > Thus month after month his papers accumulated,

00:02:23 – > until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned,

00:02:29 – > and which could not be put away save by their owner.

00:02:32 – > One winter’s night, as we sat together by the fire,

00:02:36 – > I ventured to suggest to him

00:02:38 – > that, as he had finished pasting extracts into his common-place book,

00:02:41 – > he might employ the next two hours in making our room a little more habitable.

00:02:47 – > He could not deny the justice of my request,