Up to the present time the _Sun_ has struggled along from infancy to
middle age without a safe in its office. It has never needed one. It does
not need one now, but custom has to do with these things. The associations
that surround one, go far towards making these changes. When we look at
the immense safes in the office of out neighbor, filled with bonds and
mortgages, we feel that a safe will look well. So we purchased a sort of
an iron range, with a nickle plated knob, and a lock with as many figures
on it as a tax list or a lottery advertisement, and placed it where it
will strike the visitor on his first entrance. Ah, what an imposing affair
it is! As we lean back in a chair and 1ook at it, and close our eyes, we
can see millions in it, in our mind. It is a cross between Alex.
Mitchell's safe and a child's bank. It is not full, but it has evidently
been taking something. It is a grand feeling to walk along the streets and
feel that your head contains the secret which opens the safe. No one but
yourself and your maker, and the maker of the safe knows the three numbers
which will cause it to open. The numbers are safe with you, and the All
Seeing Eye you have confidence will not give it away, so that the only
show a burglar has is to get solid with the maker of the safe.
What a piece of mechanism is the lock of a safe! The man we bought it of
gave us the programme that opens it. You go to the dial turn the knob, put
your finger by your nose and wink. If you leave out the wink, the safe
will not open, but we never leave out the wink. The trouble is, if there
is a lady customer in with a bill, and we go to open the safe, we wink too
many times and have to go all over it again. Then we place the numbers in
their order, 4-11-44, and when the "four" is exactly opposite the
dipthong, we turn the knob back three revolutions, light a cigar,
and walk three times around the room. That is to give the mechanism in the
Inside time to coalesce. Then we put the "eleven" in its place, turn the
knob forward one revolution, and put on our hat and go out and take a
drink. That is in the programme, and we sometimes think the inventor of
the lock is interested in a brewery. Then we come back, wipe our mustache
on the tail of a linen coat, place the figures "44" directly over the
pointer, whistle "There's a land that is fairer than this," place the
right foot forward, then turn the knob, the door swings on its hinges, and
the untold wealth of the Indies lies before us, in our alleged mind.
O, safe, are you honest? Are you true to us? You look pure and chaste, and
your new overskirt of varnish, and your puffed ruching of gold and blue
sets you off to good advantage, but you may not be impregnable. You have
always gone in good society, and no scandal has ever been attached to your
name. Your purity and innocence has been remarked by all who have met you,
and there are none who would dare to intimate but that you would maintain
your reputation against any attack, but sometimes we think we should
hesitate to leave you all alone, with the light turned down all night and
over Sunday, in the company of an eloquent, persuasive, good-looking
burglar armed with a jimmy, and we fear that his warm hearted can of
powder would strike a responsive chord in your impulsive nature, and that
you would yield up the jewels confined to you, and your honor, your
reputation, your standing among safes would be forever ruined. And yet we
may be wrong.
But what would it profit a burglar to gain the whole contents and wear out
his soles. If he got in that safe, he would find a package of bills that
we tried for a year to collect, and we would give him the bills if he
asked for them, and he could save his powder. He would find one bill of
sixteen dollars, with an indorsement that one dollar is paid,
after thirteen dollars worth of shoe leather had been worn out. And yet
the burglar would have a soft thing on cigars with that bill, for every
time he visited the doctor he would tell him when to come again, and give
him a cigar. Another thing the burglar would find would be a protested
draft from a great Philadelphia patent medicine advertiser. The burglar
could take a tie pass that is in the safe, and walk to Philadelphia, and
trade out the twenty-five dollar draft by taking buchu on account.
But no burglar that has any respect for himself, we feel sure, will ever
do us the injury to scrape the paint off of that safe.