The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-04-01
THE RETIRED BURGLAR.
He Tells How Easy It Is For Man
to Be Upset By the Unexpected
(New York SUM-

/
! 1T is the Unexpected said the re-
tired burglar, that upsets us. A man
who would walk straight into battle
with perfect readiness and calmness
might be greatly startled, by the exp1o-
sion of toy pistol close by when he
wasn't looking for it. A man who was
! looking for tigers might walk up to a
! tiger without a tremor and yet be
I scared half to death by cat. l was
once myself not scared exactly but
certainly thrown clean off my balance
/ by SO simple thing as an ordinary do
nestle cat, met under unusual circum-
! stances.
/ Il was prospecting the interior of a
house in the usual way and at the
usual hour of my profession, and in
due course had reached an upper chain
Der, in which l set my lamp down upon
the bureau preparatory to work There
| was a man asleep in the bed at my
back in this room, but he was, to all
| appearances, sound asleep, and l ap-
| pretended no trouble from him. There
We're in the top drawer of this bureau
a few trinkets worth removing, and
when 1 had got them into my bag
shut that drawer and started to open
the next. 1t was a good bureau, draw
ers working slick and smooth and l
! pulled the second draw out as far as
l wanted it at a touch. AS l looked
down into II | saw something gleam-
ing there in a dim sort of way in the
| dark and the next minute l heard a
! sort of a Zoopi in the atmosphere, or
! thought I did, and something Ieaped
out OF that drawer and went up over
my shoulder, just touching my face as
| it passed.
1T was a. sat. That's all. Just cat.
| 1 suppose it had been around the room
i H. 49,, IL
| had been left open and the cat had
| jumped into it and gone to sleep there,
and had been shut in there. still asleep
| when the drawer was closed, after
dusk, maybe, and the cat was not no
| ticed. All those things I realized as the
cat went over my shoulder, which was
only a fraction of a second after the
time when ] had seen its eyes-as
now know them to have been-shining
in, the drawer, But in that very brief
period I had involuntarily started back
| don't suppose any man is absolutely
proof against surprise. But, even so,
should have been all right in half a
second and nothing would have hap
pened If / hadn't caught my heel in a
rug in stepping back. / couldn't re-
cover myself, though 1 had completely
recovered my mental self-control before
had fallen.
II went down with crash that just
made the house rattle, falling with my
head on the floor close up by the side of
the bed. The man in the bed was
lightning. He woke up, turned over
and swung his arm in a sweep down
from the side of the bed while I was
turning over on the floor. His hand
just licked my head as / turned away
from it, only a touch, but 1t was the
touch of a man who wasn't shy, and in
one instant l heard the spring of the
bed crash under him as he bounced out
of it. He was after me, but by this
time I had gone.
81 had hung on to the bag through it
all by instinct, and so 1 got away with
the few trinkets had found in the top
drawer; but in place of them I left for
him, on the top of the bureau, my lamp
for a souvenir"