Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1878 — How a San Francisco Lady Routed a Burglar. [ARTICLE]

How a San Francisco Lady Routed a Burglar.

On Thursday last a lady residing on California street, near Leave*worth, whose husband is absent from the city, collected by hia request 912&«fcur/Knte. She expended 980 of it duAng tne <s£y, Shadid not, retire until eleyenoVclnelr on-*Ph#A<«y J*itAirt>pi ping off into a slpepr.when she was suddenly aroused to perfect wakefulness by a slight clatter. She went through a swift and startled mental Caloulation to account for it, and concluded that it was caused by the dropping of the key of the front door on the hall floor, and that it must have been pushed out by a burglar in effecting an entrance to rob her. Now was the time for the average lady to leap from her couch, turn in seven different alarms, turn on a flood of gas, throw up the window and screech, murder, fire and police. This lady was not of-the average, and slipping noiselessly from the bed she found her nusband’s loaded revolver without striking a light, cocked it, and emerging from her room upon the landing of the stairs leading to the hall, she peered down. She haa calculated correct, for in the hall below making a very good bull’s-eye relieved against the half light of the opened door beyond she saw the muffled figure of a burglar approaching the stairs. “Stop there. What do you want?” she asked. The man halted for a moment in evident surprise, but answered., with an oath:

“I want money, and I know you’ve got some, and I’m going to have it!” But the intrepid lady never faltered, and retaining her place at the head of the stairs and her head on the bull’seye, she answered: “ You shall not have it. I have the money and 1 will keep it, too.” “ What’s that you say? I can’t hear you. Hold on a minute till I come up to you,” said the fellow, starting to again advance. “Nevermind,” said the lady, “I’ll save you the trouble of climbing the stairs,” and she immediately started down. The burglar stood astonished as this suspicious civility until the lady had descended into the faint lines of light penetrating from the street, when he saw the glint of the levelled pistol. He instantly made a bound for the door with a muttered oath, leaped down the porch steps, cleared the fence into the street and escaped- The lady’s nerve is deserving of all praise, as one such reception as hers goes further in checking burglary than half a dozen halting prosecutions in a Criminal Court, and she would only have added to the excellence of the result by shooting a good-sized bullet into the felon’s stomach.—San Francisco Chronicle.