People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1894 — TROUSERS THAT WERE A TRAP. [ARTICLE]

TROUSERS THAT WERE A TRAP.

Anecdote by the Retired Burglar Who Lifted More Than Ho Could Carry. “I went one night,” said the retired burglar, “into the room of a man who had his clothes stacked up on a chair alongside the bed, with the trousers thrown on top iu a careless sort of way, as though he had been too tired or too lazy to straighten ’em out. The righthand pocket looked inviting and I reached into it. There was a pocketbook there, but when I tried to pull it out my hand was held on tho sharp point of a dozen wires. “You’ve seen those mousetraps with little cone-shaped wire tunnels for the mouse to run his head into? lie can get his head in easily enough, but when he wants to pull it out the ends of the wires stick into his head and neck and hold him. Well, this man had fixed up a contrivance like that in his pocket. I could have freed myself by taking a little time and using a little more patience, but I said to myself: ‘Why not carry the trousers off and take my time about it?’ I gathered them up and started. It was a mistake; I hadn’t gone six feet before I felt a little tug, and the points were pulled Into the hand deeper than ever. Of course I knew at once what it all meant; there was a cord attached to one of the trousers’ legs and the other end of it was tied to the man’s hand, and that was what I had brought up against “He was out of bed in a minute. I made a bluff at him, but hampered as I was with practically only one hand, I really wasn’t in it at all, and in less than two minutes he had me tied up waiting for the police.”—St. Louis Republic.