though the world explode

There's evidence scattered throughout the stories - Watson reading a yellow back novel in Boscombe Valley Mystery (although he gets frustrated and tosses it away because his life is now much more exciting than the books he used to like so much), Watson trying to read again at the beginning of the Crooked Man - but none so much as there is in A Study in Scarlet, when Watson finally finds out what Holmes does for a living and excitedly compares him to Dupin and Lecoq.

Happily, Watson says to Holmes, "I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories" (Doyle 18).

Holmes then, of course, goes on to thoroughly insult Lecoq and Dupin, elevating himself above them. Watson then writes "I felt rather indignant at having two characters whom I had admired treated in this cavalier style" (Doyle 19).

It's so relatable to any reader who has heard someone make a dismissive remark about a character they love - you feel offended on their behalf, as Watson does then.

The fact of the matter is that Holmes is the absolute opposite of cool and aloof when he first meets Watson. I'll present these quotations to you without comment - they are all from the same scene, on pages 10, 11, and 12.

"At the sound of our steps he glanced round and sprang to his feet with a cry of pleasure. 'I've found it! I've found it,' he shouted to my companion, running towards us with a test-tube in his hand. 'I have found a re-agent which is precipitated by haemoglobin and nothing else.' Had he discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have shown upon his features."

"He seized me by the coat-sleeve in his eagerness, and drew me over to the table at which he had been working."

"'Ha! ha!' he cried, clapping his hands, and looking as delighted as a child with a new toy. 'What do you think of that?'"

"His eyes fairly glittered as he spoke, and he put his hand over his heart and bowed as if to some applauding crowd conjured up by his imagination."

"Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. 'I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street... which would suit us down to the ground...'"

Watson is defending Holmes even before he meets him, and even though he's a little alarmed by Stamford's mention of Holmes beating corpses, it seems obvious whose side we should be on when Stamford says Holmes might slip something into a friend's drink just to see what it did and then continues, "To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge." To which Watson replies, "Very right too" (Doyle 9).

There's also the moment before this where Watson who already most readers have probably grown to like gets frustrated with Stamford and says "It seems to me, Stamford, ...that you have some reason for washing your hands of the mattter. Is this fellow's temper so formidable, or what is it? Don't be mealymouthed about it" (Doyle 9).