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Show THE RETIRED BURGLAR. One of the Most Remarkable Incidents t Eis Variegated Career. "After I had gathered iu what I could find in the dining room, " said the retired burglar, tellir.;of his experience in a house in western Massachusetts, "I started for the parlor. This parlor W3S just in front of tho dining room, anu mere were neavy curtains oetween. I pushed these curtains one side and went in carefully, so as not to mar the furniture by kicking it, feeling along for the table which I knew must bo in the center. I came to it presently and found it very solid feeling, with a sort of molding or carving along the edga I had struck it on a side apparently, and so I felt "toward the dining room until I came to a corner of the table, and then I felt along the end for the next corner to get the dimensions of it. I struck tho other corner so quick that it made my hair raise right up. I knew there was only one thing they build of such shape, and that's a coffin. "I turned my light on it, and it was a big oak casket, one of the kind they make now'days, square and solid, and it had three silver handles on each side. I didn't dare look in, but I felt as though I ought to have them handles. Tho head was toward the front of the house and the foot toward the dining room. I set my lamp down and got my screwdriver out of my bag and began on one of the handles nearest the foot. I suppose I must have felt a little easier after I'd got that one off and into the bag. I know I went around the end and then up tho other side pretty prompt, getting 'em off smooth as could be, and around the head and started down the other side where I'd begun. I got the handle off by the head on that side, and then I went at the last handle, the one iu the middle. In turning tho last screw out of the handle I dropped my screwdriver. "It seemed to me as though it made more noise than an iron telegraph pole dropping inside of an empty iron oil utnK. i just jay aown ana waited, i didn't dare run. I expected a million people would come pouring down the stairs and from all around, and I just waited, lying on the floor, but there didn't anybody come. You know, tho fact was that dropping that screwdriver hadn't made noise enough to wake up a mouso, but it soemed to me like the greatest racket you ever heard, and it scared me most to death. But when nobody no-body came I picked up the screwdriver and set it in the notch of the screw again, and I'd just got that handle off when I heard somebody say: " 'Don't you think you're crowdin aa here a little, my friend, carrying away them handles?' It was the dead man billing up &na looKing aown at me. J. suppose h6'd been in an epileptic trance or something of that sort, and dropping that screwdriver had made just shock enough to start him into life again. "I was 60 scared I dropped the handle, han-dle, but I grabbed my bag I suppose instinct made me do that and started out throcgh the dining room again and down cellar and out by the window I came in by. I didn't wait to see if anybody any-body was coming this time. "I got $117 for those five handles. H 6eemed a pity to lose the other one, but tt was always a great satisfaction to ma to think that I'd woke the man up. " New York Sun. In Paris It la gravely told that box provided with slits are attached to toii.b-itones. toii.b-itones. Into them are dropped tho carda : of remembering friends who make th ikrrimasa to the graves of the dead. |