Arthur Conan Doyle: Through the Magic Door
==========================================
    a machine-readable transcription 

Version 1.0:	1993-02-08
	1.1:	1993-04-07	corrected a number of transcription
				errors

This is a machine-readable transcription of Arthur Conan Doyle's
`Through the Magic Door', published by Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd.:
London, [1919].  It was first published by Smith, Elder & Co.: London,
1907.

Transcription principles:
-------------------------
The index of the printed text has been deleted as being of fairly
little interest for an e-text edition.

Each line in the file correspond to a line in the book, except that
end-of-line hyphenation has been removed. Page breaks have not been
retained.

Dropped capitals have been converted to ordinary capitals. The
immediately following words in caps have been converted to lower- and
upper-case letters as appropriate.

Italics have been placed inside underscore characters (_). Three
hyphens (---) represent an em dash. Longer sequences of hyphens
represent correspondingly longer dashes.

Accented characters have been represented by the following encoding:

		e acute
		e grave
		e diaeresis
		e circumflex
		ae ligature
		OE ligature
		oe ligature

I trust the principles are fairly clear.

There is one possible printing error in the book, which has been left
uncorrected: 'Paraquay'.

The transcription and proof-reading was done by Anders Thulin,
Rydsvagen 288, S-582 50 Linkoping, Sweden. 
Email: ath@linkoping.trab.se.

I'd be grateful to learn of any errors you find in the text.

	THROUGH THE
	MAGIC DOOR

	    BY

     ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

   THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR.

            I.

  I care not how humble your bookshelf may
be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. 
Close the door of that room behind you, shut
off with it all the cares of the outer world,
plunge back into the soothing company of the
great dead, and then you are through the
magic portal into that fair land whither worry
and vexation can follow you no more. You
have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid
behind you. There stand your noble, silent
comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your
eye down their files. Choose your man. And
then you have but to hold up your hand to
him and away you go together into dreamland. 
Surely there would be something eerie about
a line of books were it not that familiarity has
deadened our sense of it. Each is a mummified
soul embalmed in cere-cloth and natron
of leather and printer's ink. Each cover of a
true book enfolds the concentrated essence of
a man. The personalities of the writers have
faded into the thinnest shadows, as their bodies
into impalpable dust, yet here are their very
spirits at your command.

  It is our familiarity also which has lessened
our perception of the miraculous good
fortune which we enjoy. Let us suppose that
we were suddenly to learn that Shakespeare
had returned to earth, and that he would
favour any of us with an hour of his wit and
his fancy. How eagerly we would seek him
out! And yet we have him---the very best
of him---at our elbows from week to week,
and hardly trouble ourselves to put out our
hands to beckon him down. No matter what
mood a man may be in, when once he has