“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 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.”