The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm by Mark Twain — Confounding Contraptions Are Nothing New

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Mark Twain falls into conversation with a pleasant gentleman who has mild opinions on weather, crops, literature, scandal and religion. Then the talk lands on burglar alarms, and the gentleman is suddenly not mild at all. His was the most imposing alarm in America. It had a gong the size of a washbowl, forty-seven little tags, and an expert from New York who always came when called, and always remembered to send a bill. Twain, who had an alarm put into his own Hartford house the year before he wrote this, lets the man talk. First published in Harper’s Christmas supplement, December 1882. Despite a few suspicious reviews, every story you hear is narrated by an actual human—me, Don McDonald.…