time or other find somebody who would be on my side, but it has
never happened. And I am never able to go glibly forward and state the
circumstances of that buggy's progress without having to halt and
consider, and call up in my mind the spoon-handle, the bowl of the
spoon, the buggy and the horse, and my position in the buggy: and the
minute I have got that far and try to turn it to the left it goes to
ruin; I can't see how it is ever going to fetch me out right when we get
to the door. Susy is right in her estimate. I can't understand things.

That burglar-alarm which Susy mentions led a gay and careless life, and
had no principles. It was generally out of order at one point or
another; and there was plenty of opportunity, because all the windows
and doors in the house, from the cellar up to the top floor, were
connected with it. However, in its seasons of being out of order it
could trouble us for only a very little while: we quickly found out that
it was fooling us, and that it was buzzing its blood-curdling alarm
merely for its own amusement. Then we would shut it off, and send to New
York for the electrician--there not being one in all Hartford in those
days. When the repairs were finished we would set the alarm again and
reestablish our confidence in it. It never did any real business except
upon one single occasion. All the rest of its expensive career was
frivolous and without purpose. Just that one time it performed its duty,
and its whole duty--gravely, seriously, admirably. It let fly about two
o'clock one black and dreary March morning, and I turned out promptly,
because I knew that it was not fooling, this time. The bath-room door
was on my side of the bed. I stepped in there, turned up the gas, looked
at the annunciator, and turned off the alarm--so far as the door
indicated was concerned--thus stopping the racket. Then I came back to
bed. Mrs. Clemens opened the debate:

"What was it?"

"It was the cellar door."

"Was it a burglar, do you think?"

"Yes," I said, "of course it was. Did you suppose it was a Sunday-school
superintendent?"

"No. What do you suppose he wants?"

"I suppose he wants jewelry, but he is not acquainted with the house and
he thinks it is in the cellar. I don't like to disappoint a burglar whom
I am not acquainted with, and who has done me no harm, but if he had
had common sagacity enough to inquire, I could have told him we kept
nothing down there but coal and vegetables.