The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — A Scandal in Bohemia • Paragraph 487
Stage 1 of 6

Read it through once

“A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic effect,” remarked Holmes. “This is wanting in the police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter. Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.”