and crossed her legs and smiled down at me, and
seemed gratified to see me so astonished.

I was ashamed, and also lost; and it was while
wandering the woods hunting for myself that I

310



HUNTING THE DECEITFUL TURKEY

found a deserted log cabin and had one of the best
meals there that in my life-days I have eaten. The
weed-grown garden was full of ripe tomatoes, and I
ate them ravenously, though I had never liked them
before. Not more than two or three times since
have I tasted anything that was so delicious as those
tomatoes. I surfeited myself with them, and did
not taste another one until I was in middle life. I
can eat them now, but I do not like the look of them.
I suppose we have all experienced a surfeit at one
time or another. Once, in stress of circumstances, I
ate part of a barrel of sardines, there being nothing
else at hand, but since then I have always been able
to get along without sardines.



THE McWILLIAMSES

AND THE
BURGLAR ALARM



THE McWILLIAMSES AND THE
BURGLAR ALARM



THE conversation drifted smoothly and pleas
antly along from weather to crops, from crops
to literature, from literature to scandal, from scandal
to religion; then took a random jump, and landed
on the subject of burglar alarms. And now for the
first time Mr. McWilliams showed feeling. When
ever I perceive this sign on this man's dial, I com
prehend it, and lapse into silence, and give him
opportunity to unload his heart. Said he, with but
ill-controlled emotion :

"I do not go one single cent on burglar alarms,
Mr. Twain not a single cent and I will tell you
why. When we were finishing our house, we found
we had a little cash left over, on account of the
plumber not knowing it. I was for enlightening the
heathen with it, for I was always unaccountably
down on the heathen somehow ; but Mrs. McWilliams
said no, let's have a burglar alarm. I agreed to this
compromise. I will explain that whenever I want
a thing, and Mrs. McWilliams wants another thing,
and we decide upon the thing that Mrs. McWilliams
wants as we always do she calls that a com
promise. Very well : the man came up from New
York and put in the alarm, and charged three
hundred and twenty-five dollars for it, and said we
could sleep without uneasiness now. So we did for



MARK TWAIN

awhile say a month. Then one night we smelled
smoke, and I was advised to get up and see what
the matter was. I lit a candle, and started toward
the stairs, and met a burglar coming out of a room
with a basket of tinware, which he had mistaken
for solid silver in the dark. He was smoking a pipe.
I said, 'My friend, we do not allow smoking in
this room.' He said he was a stranger, and could
not be expected to know the rules of the house: said
he had been in many houses just as good as this one,
and it had never been objected to before. He added
that as far as his experience went, such rules had
never been considered to apply to burglars, anyway.

"I said: 'Smoke along, then, if it is the custom,
though I think that the conceding of a privilege to a
burglar which is denied to a bishop is a conspicuous
sign of the looseness of the times. But waiving all
that, what business have you to be entering this
house in this furtive and clandestine way, without
ringing the burglar alarm?'

"He looked confused and ashamed, and said, with
embarrassment: 'I beg a thousand pardons. I did
not know you had a burglar alarm, else I would have
rung it. I beg you will not mention it where my
parents may hear of it, for they are old and feeble,
and such a seemingly wanton breach of the hallowed
conventionalities of our Christian civilization might
all too rudely sunder the frail bridge which hangs
darkling between the pale and evanescent present
and the solemn great deeps of the eternities. May
I trouble you for a match?'

' ' I said : ' Your sentiments do you honor, but if you



McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM

will allow me to say it, metaphor is not your best hold.
Spare your thigh ; this kind light only on the box, and
seldom there, in fact, if my experience may be trusted.
But to return to business: how did you get in here?'

'"Through a second-story window.'

"It was even so. I redeemed the tinware at
pawnbroker's rates, less cost of advertising, bade
the burglar good-night, closed the window after him,
and retired to headquarters to report. Next morning
we sent for the burglar-alarm man, and he came up
and explained that the reason the alarm did not
'go off' was that no part of the house but the first
floor was attached to the alarm. This was simply
idiotic; one might as well have no armor on at all
in battle as to have it only on his legs. The expert
now put the whole second story on the alarm,
charged three hundred dollars for it, and went his
way. By and by, one night, I found a burglar in
the third story, about to start down a ladder with a
lot of miscellaneous property. My first impulse was
to crack his head with a billiard cue; but my second
was to refrain from this attention, because he was
between me and the cue rack. The second impulse
was plainly the soundest, so I refrained, and pro
ceeded to compromise. I redeemed the property at
former rates, after deducting ten per cent, for use of
ladder, it being my ladder, and next day we sent
down for the expert once more, and had the third
story attached to the alarm, for three hundred
dollars.

"By this time the 'annunciator' had grown to
formidable dimensions. It had forty-seven tags on



MARK TWAIN

it, marked with the names of the various rooms and
chimneys, and it occupied the space of an ordinary
wardrobe. The gong was the size of a wash-bowl,
and was placed above the head of our bed. There
was a wire from the house to the coachman's quarters
in the stable, and a noble gong alongside his pillow.
"We should have been comfortable now but for
one defect. Every morning at five the cook opened
the kitchen door, in the way of business, and rip
went that gong! The first time this happened I
thought the last day was come sure. I didn't think
it in bed no, but out of it for the first effect of
that frightful gong is to hurl you across the house,
and slam you against the wall, and then curl you
up, and squirm you like a spider on a stove lid, till
somebody shuts the kitchen door. In solid fact,
there is no clamor that is even remotely comparable
to the dire clamor which that gong makes. Well,
this catastrophe happened every morning regularly
at five o'clock, and lost us three hours sleep; for,
mind you, when that thing wakes you, it doesn't
merely wake you in spots; it wakes you all over,
conscience and all, and you are good for eighteen
hours of wide-awakeness subsequently eighteen
hours of the very most inconceivable wide-awakeness
that you ever experienced in your life. A stranger
died on our hands one time, and we vacated and left
him in our room overnight. Did that stranger wait
for the general judgment? No, sir; he got up at
five the next morning in the most prompt and
unostentatious way. I knew he would; I knew it
mighty well. He collected his life-insurance, and



McWILLIAMSESANDTHE BURGLAR ALARM

lived happy ever after, for there was plenty of proof
as to the perfect squareness of his death.

"Well, we were gradually fading toward a better
land, on account of the daily loss of sleep; so we
finally had the expert up again, and he ran a wire to
the outside of the door, and placed a switch there,
whereby Thomas, the butler, always made one little
mistake he switched the alarm off at night when
he went to bed, and switched it on again at daybreak
in the morning, just in time for the cook to open the
kitchen door, and enable that gong to slam us across
the house, sometimes breaking a window with one or
the other of us. At the end of a week we recognized
that this switch business was a delusion and a snare.
We also discovered that a band of burglars had been
lodging in the house the whole time not exactly
to steal, for there wasn't much left now, but to hide
from the police, for they were hot pressed, and they
shrewdly judged that the detectives would never
think of a tribe of burglars taking sanctuary in a
house notoriously protected by the most imposing
and elaborate burglar alarm in America.

"Sent down for the expert again, and this time he
struck a most dazzling idea he fixed the thing so that
opening the kitchen door would take off the alarm. It
was a noble idea, and he charged accordingly. But
you already foresee the result. I switched on the
alarm every night at bed-time, no longer trusting on
Thomas's frail memory ; and as soon as the lights were
out the burglars walked in at the kitchen door, thus
taking the alarm off without waiting for the cook to do
it in the morning. You see how aggravatingly we were

319



MARK TWAIN

situated. For months we couldn't have any company.
Not a spare bed in the house ; all occupied by burglars.

"Finally, I got up a cure of my own. The expert
answered the call, and ran another ground wire to
the stable, and established a switch there, so that
the coachman could put on and take off the alarm.
That worked first rate, and a season of peace ensued,
during which we got to inviting company once more
and enjoying life.

"But by and by the irrepressible alarm invented
a new kink. One winter's night we were flung out
of bed by the sudden music of that awful gong, and
when we hobbled to the annunciator, turned up the
gas, and saw the word 'Nursery' exposed, Mrs.
McWilliams fainted dead away, and I came precious
near doing the same thing myself. I seized my
shotgun, and stood timing the coachman whilst
that appalling buzzing went on. I knew that his
gong had flung him out, too, and that he would be
along with his gun as soon as he could jump into
his clothes. When I judged that the time was ripe,
I crept to the room next the nursery, glanced through
the window, and saw the dim outline of the coach
man in the yard below, standing at present-arms and
waiting for a chance. Then I hopped into the nursery
and fired, and in the same instant the coachman fired
at the red flash of my gun. Both of us were success
ful; I crippled a nurse, and he shot off all my back
hair. We turned up the gas, and telephoned for a
surgeon. There was not a sign of a burglar, and no
window had been raised. One glass was absent, but
that was where the coachman's charge had come



McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM

through. Here was a fine mystery a burglar alarm
'going off' at midnight of its own accord, and not a
burglar in the neighborhood !

"The expert answered the usual call, and explained
that it was a 'False alarm.' Said it was easily fixed.
So he overhauled the nursery window, charged a
remunerative figure for it, and departed.

"What we suffered from false alarms for the next
three 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 remem
bered 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

$19.77
321



MARK TWAIN

"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 win
dows 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 scheme. They promised to have
the whole thing finished in ten days. They began
work, and we left for the summer. They worked a
couple of days; then they left for the summer. After

322



McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM

which the burglars moved in, and began their summer
vacation. When we returned in the fall, the house
was as empty as a beer closet in premises where
painters have been at work. We refurnished, and
then sent down to hurry up the expert. He came up
and finished the job, and said: 'Now this clock is
set to put on the alarm every night at 10, and take
it off every morning at 5:45. All you've got to do
is to wind her up every week, and then leave her
alone she will take care of the alarm herself. 1

"After that we had a most tranquil season during
three months. The bill was prodigious, of course,
and I had said I would not pay it until the new
machinery had proved itself to be flawless. The
time stipulated was three months. So I paid the
bill, and the very next day the alarm went to buzzing
like ten thousand bee swarms at ten o'clock in the
morning. I turned the hands around twelve hours,
according to instructions, and this took off the alarm;
but there was another hitch at night, and I had to
set her ahead twelve hours once more to get her to
put the alarm on again. That sort of nonsense
went on a week or two, then the expert came up and
put in a new clock. He came up every three months
during the next three years, and put in a new clock.
But it was always a failure. His clocks all had the
same perverse defect: they would put the alarm on
in the daytime, and they would not put it on at night;
and if you forced it on yourself, they would take it
off again the minute your back was turned.

"Now there is the history of that burglar alarm
everything just as it happened; nothing extenuated;

323



MARK TWAIN

and naught set down in malice. Yes, sir, and when
I had slept nine years with burglars, and maintained
an expensive burglar alarm the whole time, for their
protection, not mine, and at my sole cost for not

a d d cent could I ever get them to contribute I

just said to Mrs. McWilliams that I had had enough
of that kind of pie; so with her full consent I took
the whole thing out and traded it off for a dog, and
shot the dog. I don't know what you think about
it, Mr. Twain; but I think those things are made
solely in the interest of the burglars. Yes, sir, a
burglar alarm combines in its person all that is
objectionable about a fire, a riot, and a harem, and
at the same time had none of the compensating
advantages, of one sort or another, that customarily
belong with that combination. Good-by: I get off
here."



THE END



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