The houses of the well-to-do were a combination of safe deposit vault and fortress.

The appropriation of the personal belongings of others by our own children of to-day is looked upon as a rudimentary survival of the theft-characteristic that in those early times was universal.
I got little out of him.

He struck me as stupid, and yet the deftness with which he worked with his one hand seemed to belie his stupidity.
This suggested an idea to me.
"How did you happen to get your arm caught in the machine ?" I asked.
He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and shook his head.

"I don't know.

It just happened." "Carelessness ?" I prompted.
"No," he answered, "I ain't for callin' it that.