GENIUS UNREWARDED

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1675, 6 April 1904, Page 10

GENIUS UNREWARDED

“I suppose/’ said, the retired burglar, "that we, ail of U 9, no matter who we are nor what our business it, get freak notions into our heads sometimes. I knpw I used to when I was younger. "I was truck twice with the idea, of waiting right up the side of a house as a gcodl way of into it, nn-d* X demon* strated that it could bo done, too. I got the start of that notion from, seeing telegraph linemen, walk up a telegraph pole, digging their steel into the pole, as they climbed. But they, of course had the advantage of bean® able to put their aims around) the pole; they had a firm, support th.or©; a HLflin couldto. fc well his armig around a ho-asei, you know. “But I got another idea presently from a cat. Oats, you know, are the most expert climbers you ever saw; can go rignt up the face of a ‘board fence without any trouble whatever. They must make a run at it and spring half way, and then climn the rest of the way with their claws ; ngnt up the vertical face of a fence. <r Why shouldn't I do tnat? I don't mean jump half-Way up the side oi a house, but why shouldn’t I be able to handle claws, as well as a cat could. --to. having supplied wyself with a set of lineman’s foot irons, I went to the blacksmith who used 1 to make the peculiar kinds of crowbar specially adapted to use in my profession and got him to make me a pair of handclaws—with a stout). sharppointed steel hook at the end of each finger. “Apparently I was equipped all right now —I had claws on all four. But when I came to try them, which I did! .on my own house after dark, I found they didn’t work. Clapboard house, mine was. and being of wood] I didn’t see why my claws shouldn’t work all right-on it. But they didn’t. And the next time I saw a cat go up a board fence I discovered the rear eon wiy. .. “The cat invariably goes up such a tonne

on one of tlie posts, or on, one of the vertical boards set along at regular intervals and nailed to the boards to bind them together and keep them, trim; the cat goes up these posts, because in them it gets wood with the fibre running up and down, into which it is much, easier to sink the claws than it would be into wood' running crosswise. “I practised up a little on the corner of my own: house—l didn’t mark ’em too much for fear the, neighbours would wonder what all the marks meant —and then I started! out one night to try my claws. There were as many wooden houses in the town where I was living then as there Were of brick, if not more, and all I had to do was to pick .out my house and tackle it. “The house I selected on finally had a verandah that I could have shinned up in a minute with perfect ease, but really there was the difficulty about that of mak-. ing a great rattling and snapping wlieu you got on to itg roof, to say nothing of the.! erandah’s being on the street front of the house. And then the corner of this house that I had decided to tackle had a second-storey window opening close to it, that I knew! I could roach from it; so there I goes. •‘I had pat on my climbers before I left home, and now' I put my claws on, and hung my bag over my shoulder by a gra-p and started. And it was hard work. I can tell ypu, from the go-bff. '‘This man took be tter care of his house than I did of mine, and for on© thing it was better painted. There was mighty little paint on my house, and I_could put those claws into the wood easily. I had a right down effort to do this here, and it was hard work. “I set my right claw' into one side l and then my left claw into the other, as higti above the ground as I conveniently could while standing on it, and then 1 raised one foot off the ground and jacnl.ruedl my climbing spur in on cue side and then raised the other and' jammed in, that; and then I was like a jumping stick after it’s been pushed up together. "And so I worked my way -up. th e qormer of that house. I could do it all right, but it was the hardest work I ever underto )k at all and slow'. Well, I began to tbink it would be daybreak before I got up to that eeond-storey window’, but I got up to that level finally and had stepped 0119 foot over on to the sill of the window and had hooked one claw into the cap of it when I hears a man saying: '“Well, of all cha gosh-blasked fools I ever saw, you certainly are the goshblastedest. Come in and let’s see you,” and he laughed till I thought he’d wake up all the neighbours. "And when I got home I put my claws’ in my climbing, and he’d been looking at me for ten or fifteen minutes tlirpugh the crack between the window casing and the blind. Wliat woke him, first was my jamming the spurs dowm so hard as I had done to get a firm footing; doing that I’d jarred the whole bouse. And 1 wdien be came to the window to see what was up he found me tugmg away and puffing and blow'ing like a porpoirq, and I know that I’d forgotten about everything else in the world but the climbing. ‘‘Ail the things .what he told me he said of course, after I’d got in through the window, which I did at his earnest request. Him being a larger and abler man, physically, than I, and I being pretty tired as you may imagine from, my climbing, there was nothing for me to do but to accept liis invitation. ‘‘He said he supposed I must have made a nutmeg grater of that corner of the .house, and he reckoned 1 it would cost as much as sdol. to* get the holes puttied up, but he’d stand that, he said, and then he laughed again about as hard as he had at first, and let me out by- the door. - "And yhen I got home I put my claws and climbing irons away and never used ’em again. I could go straight all right no doubt, and get into a lious l © that way if I wanted to, but after all I felt that it would be Simpler and safer and easier to stick to the cellar window.”