take care of, and they dealt two to Ma, and she never told Pa anything
about it. They came to supper the first night, and Pa didn't get home,
so when they went to the Convention in the evening Ma gave them a night
key, and Pa came home from the boxing match about eleven o'clock, and
Ma was asleep. Just as Pa got most of his clothes off he heard somebody
fumbling at the front door, and he thought it was burglars. Pa has got
nerve enough, when he is on the inside of the house and the burglars are
on the outside. He opened a window and looked out and saw two suspicious
looking characters trying to pick the lock with a skeleton key, and he
picked up a new slop-jar that Ma had bought when we moved, cover and
all, and dropped it down right between the two del-gates. Gosh, if it
had hit one of them there would have been the solemnest funeral you ever
saw. Just as it struck they got the door opened and came in the hall,
and the wind was blowing pretty hard and they thought a cyclone
had taken the cupola off the house. They were talking about being
miraculously saved, and trying to strike a match on their wet pants,
when Pa went to the head of the stairs and pushed over a wire stand
filled with potted plants, which struck pretty near the delegates, and
one of them said the house was coming down sure, and they better go into
the cellar, and they went down and got behind the furnace. Pa called me
up and wanted me to go down cellar and tell the burglars we were onto
them, and for them to get out, but I wasn't very well, so Pa locked his
door and went to bed. I guess it must have been half an hour before Pa's
cold feet woke Ma up, and then Pa told her not to move for her life,
cause there were two of the savagest looking burglars that ever was,
rumaging over the house. Ma smelled Pa's breath to see if he had got
to drinking again, and then she got up and hid her oraide watch in her
shoes, and her Onalaska diamond ear-rings in the Bible, where she said
no burglar would ever find them, and Pa and Ma laid awake till daylight,
and then Pa said he wasn't afraid, and he and Ma went down cellar. Pa
stood on the bottom stair and looked around, and one of the delegates
said, 'Mister, is the storm over, and is your family safe?' and Ma
recognized the voice and said, 'Why, its one of the delegates. What
are you doing down there?' and Pa said 'What's a delegate?' and then Ma
explained it, and Pa apologized, and the delegate said it was no matter,