The Doings of Raffles Haw (Arthur Conan Doyle)

As our first teatime is before Summer Reading officially begins, Sir Arthur and I are communicating by letter.  I sit down and eagerly tear open the envelope, pulling out the  sheets containing our first story: The Doings of Raffles Haw.

Now, for reasons completely unknown to me, I keep referring to this novella as "The Goings of Israel Daw".  I'm pretty sure that Chesterton had a short story or a novel with a similar name*.  But, I digress.

My tea of choice for this story is chamomile, since this is a somewhat more relaxed story (relying more on tension than direct action) and it would do me good to be relaxed.  The tea is the same golden color as the pollen-covered landscape outside, which also seems fitting.  Because of the inhospitality of the landscape, I am reading this in my library.

One word of warning before you start this story.  Do not Google it.  In fact, don't really read the book description, either.  The description I got in advance did not reveal the secret to Raffles Haw's wealth, which meant it came as a complete surprise to me.  But, when I googled it afterwards: BOOM!  Big spoiler right away.  Save yourself the surprise.

So, the story was a really interesting one, and I was completely hooked from the start.  The McIntyres are down on their luck after their father's failed business venture, and have to move to a small town in the countryside.  Quite by chance, they become acquainted with their insanely rich neighbor, Raffles Haw (Gatsby has nothing on this guy!).  But, as everyone gets closer, the eldest Mr. McIntyre becomes more and more suspicious of Haw and his money.  Where does it all come from?

This story is amazing.  The plot itself is pretty simple, but the magic is in all the inventions that Haw has in his house.  Conan Doyle's imagination is boundless, and it was so much fun to see all the insane gadgetry that he concocted.  I won't talk too much about that here, as with the secret of his wealth, it was more fun to come across it as I was reading, as opposed to knowing it in advance.  The central message of this story might come across as a little preachy at times, but it never felt overwhelmingly so.  And it certainly never affected my enjoyment of the story.

The whole experience left me very excited for more adventures to come.

*He did.  It was "The Honor of Israel Gow"