When the neighbors heard of this incident they unanimously pronounced me a fool, accompanying that opprobrious stigmatization with an epithet which my religious convictions prohibit me from recording.
From what I have already told you it is likely that you have gathered that Alice and I had good reason to conclude that being a householder was by no means as cheap an enjoyment as could be conceived of. We recalled the words of the sagacious and prudent Mr. Denslow. "When you get a place of your own," said that wise man, "you will find that there will be a thousand annoying little demands for your money where now there is one." Our other friend, Mr. Black, had expressed the same idea when he told us that "a house-owner never gets through paying out." If Alice and I had had any thought upon the matter at all it was to the effect that when we had a home of our own we got rid forever of the monstrous bugaboo of house-rent at sixty dollars a month. We supposed that all our spare time could be devoted to counting the money we were going to save by getting out of a grasping, avaricious landlord's clutches. Experience is a severe teacher; Alice and I have found out a great many things since we began to have direct dealings with builders, masons, plumbers, painters et id omne genus, as well as with sprinklers, day laborers, landscape gardeners, fruit-tree peddlers, lightning-rod agents, and others of that ilk.
We duly became aware that we were losing a good deal at the hands of nocturnal depredators. Our flower beds were despoiled with amazing regularity; the broken lath and old lumber which had been piled up in the back yard, and which Alice intended to use eventually for kindling, disappeared mysteriously, and the carpenters reported finding evidences every morning that some person or persons had been tramping through the house the night before.
We were all at once possessed of the paralyzing fear that this nocturnal trespasser, or these nocturnal trespassers, might set our house on fire. The floors were strewn with shavings; a spark would precipitate a conflagration, and the old Schmittheimer place would burn like so much tinder. I read over the fire-insurance policies which we had taken out with our genial friends, Doller, Jeems, and Teddy, and I found out that the companies represented by those gentlemen were not responsible for losses upon unoccupied premises, or for losses resulting from incendiarism. It occurred to me that it would be wise to invite the police to keep an eye on the place at night, but this plan seemed impracticable for the reason that I wanted to keep the lawn-sprinklers running all night in defiance of the ordinance, and this could not be done if the police were to be mousing about the premises.