years no
stylographic pen can describe. During the next three months I always
flew with my gun to the room indicated, and the coachman always sallied
forth with his battery to support me. But there was never anything to
shoot at--windows all tight and secure. We always sent down for the
expert next day, and he fixed those particular windows so they would
keep quiet a week or so, and always remembered to send us a bill about
like this:

Wire ............................$2.15
Nipple........................... .75
Two hours' labor ................ 1.50
Wax.............................. .47
Tape............................. .34
Screws........................... .15
Recharging battery .............. .98
Three hours' labor .............. 2.25
String........................... .02
Lard ............................ .66
Pond's Extract .................. 1.25
Springs at 50.................... 2.00
Railroad fares................... 7.25

"At length a perfectly natural thing came about--after we had answered
three or four hundred false alarms--to wit, we stopped answering them.
Yes, I simply rose up calmly, when slammed across the house by
the alarm, calmly inspected the annunciator, took note of the room
indicated; and then calmly disconnected that room from the alarm, and
went back to bed as if nothing had happened. Moreover, I left that room
off permanently, and did not send for the expert. Well, it goes without
saying that in the course of time all the rooms were taken off, and the
entire machine was out of service.

"It was at this unprotected time that the heaviest calamity of all
happened. The burglars walked in one night and carried off the burglar
alarm! yes, sir, every hide and hair of it: ripped it out, tooth and
nail; springs, bells, gongs, battery, and all; they took a hundred and
fifty miles of copper wire; they just cleaned her out, bag and baggage,
and never left us a vestige of her to swear at--swear by, I mean.

"We had a time of it to get her back; but we accomplished it finally,
for money. The alarm firm said that what we needed now was to have her
put in right--with their new patent springs in the windows to make false
alarms impossible, and their new patent clock attached to take off and
put on the alarm morning and night without human assistance. That seemed
a good