7.25 "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 windows 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.