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 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.'

"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, 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