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. 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 bloodcurdling 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. Then 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 bathroom door was on my side of the bed. I stepped in there, turned up the gas, looked at the annunciator, turned off the alarm—so far as the door indicated was concerned—thus stopping the racket. Then I came back to bed.
Mrs. Clemens said, “What was it?”
I said, “It was the cellar door.”
She said, “Was it a burglar, do you think?”
“Yes,” I said, “of course it was. Do you suppose it was a Sunday-school superintendent?”
She said, “What do you suppose he wants?”
I said: “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. Still, it may be that he is acquainted with this place and that what he really wants is coal and vegetables. On the whole, I think it is vegetables he is after.”
She said, “Are you going down to see?”
“No,” I said; “I could not be of any assistance. Let him select for himself.”
Then she said, “But suppose he comes up to the ground floor!”
I said: “That’s all right. We shall know it the minute he opens a door on that floor. It will set off the alarm.”
Just then the terrific buzzing broke out again. I said: “He has arrived. I told you he would. I know all about burglars and their ways. They are systematic people.”
I went into the bathroom to see if I was right, and I was. I shut off the dining-room and stopped the buzzing and came back to bed. My wife said:
“What do you suppose he is after now?”
I said: “I think he has got all the vegetables he wants and is coming up for napkin rings and odds and ends for the wife and the children. They all have families—burglars have—and they are always thoughtful of them; always take a few necessaries of life for themselves, and the rest as tokens of remembrance for the family. In taking them they do not forget us. Those very things represent tokens of his remembrance of us also. We never get them again. The memory of the attention remains embalmed in our hearts.”
She said. “Are you going down to see what it is he wants now?”
‘ “No,” I said; “I am no more interested than I was before. These are experienced people. They know what they want. I should be no help to him. I think he is after ceramics and bric-a-brac and such things. If he knows the house he knows that that is all that he can find on the dining-room floor.”
She said, “Suppose he comes up here!”
I said: “It is all right. He will give us notice.”
She said, “What shall we do then?”
I said, “Climb out of the window.”
She said, “Well, what is the use of a burglar alarm for us?”
I said, “You have seen that it has been useful up to the present moment, and I have explained to you how it will be continuously useful after he gets up here.”
That was the end of it. He didn’t ring any more alarms.
Presently I said: “He is disappointed, I think. He has gone off with the vegetables and the bric-a-brac and I think he is dissatisfied.”
We went to sleep, and at a quarter before eight in the morning I was out, and hurrying, for I was to take the 8:29 train for New York. I found the gas burning brightly—full head—all over the first floor. My new overcoat was gone; my old umbrella was gone; my new patent-leather shoes, which I had never worn, were gone. The large window which opened into the ombra at the rear of the house was standing wide. I passed out through it and tracked the burglar down the hill through the trees; tracked him without difficulty, because he had blazed his progress with imitation-silver napkin rings and my umbrella, and various other things which he had disapproved of; and I went back in triumph and proved to my wife that he was a disappointed burglar. I had suspected he would be, from the start, and from his not coming up to our floor to get human beings.
Things happened to me that day in New York. I will tell about them another time.
From Susy’s Biography
Papa has a peculiar
