So we purchased a sort of an iron range, with a nickle plated knob, and a lock with as many figures on it as a tax list or a lottery advertisement, and placed it where it will strike the visitor on his first entrance.  Ah, what an imposing affair it is!  As we lean back in a chair and 1ook at it, and close our eyes, we can see millions in it, in our mind.  It is a cross between Alex.  Mitchell’s safe and a child’s bank.  It is not full, but it has evidently been taking something.  It is a grand feeling to walk along the streets and feel that your head contains the secret which opens the safe.  No one but yourself and your maker, and the maker of the safe knows the three numbers which will cause it to open.  The numbers are safe with you, and the All Seeing Eye you have confidence will not give it away, so that the only show a burglar has is to get solid with the maker of the safe.

What a piece of mechanism is the lock of a safe!  The man we bought it of gave us the programme that opens it.  You go to the dial turn the knob, put your finger by your nose and wink.  If you leave out the wink, the safe will not open, but we never leave out the wink.  The trouble is, if there is a lady customer in with a bill, and we go to open the safe, we wink too many times and have to go all over it again.  Then we place the numbers in their order, 4-11-44, and when the “four” is exactly opposite the dipthong, we turn the knob back three revolutions, light a cigar, and walk three times around the room.  That is to give the mechanism in the Inside time to coalesce.  Then we put the “eleven” in its place, turn the knob forward one revolution, and put on our hat and go out and take a drink.  That is in the programme, and we sometimes think the inventor of the lock is interested in a brewery.  Then we come back, wipe our mustache on the tail of a linen coat, place the figures “44” directly over the pointer, whistle “There’s a land that is fairer than this,” place the right foot forward, then turn the knob, the door swings on its hinges, and the untold wealth of the Indies lies before us, in our alleged mind.

O, safe, are you honest?  Are you true to us?  You look pure and chaste, and your new overskirt of varnish, and your puffed ruching of gold and blue sets you off to good advantage, but you may not be impregnable.  You have always gone in good society, and no scandal has ever been attached to your name.  Your purity and innocence has been remarked by all who have met you, and there are none who would dare to intimate but that you would maintain your reputation against any attack, but sometimes we think we should hesitate to leave you all alone, with the light turned down all night and over Sunday, in the company of an eloquent, persuasive, good-looking burglar armed with a jimmy, and we fear that his warm hearted can of powder would strike a responsive chord in your impulsive nature, and that you would yield up the jewels confined to you, and your honor, your reputation, your standing among safes would be forever ruined.  And yet we may be wrong.