Mr Merriweather’s Practical Joke.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 233, 28 April 1874, Page 7

Mr Merriweather’s Practical Joke.

Merri weather lives in one of a row of houses which, as is generally the case in Philadelphia, are uniform. He thought the other night he would scare Mrs Merri weather while she was in bed, so he rose, and dressed in his night shirt, went upon the roof while she slept. He tied a nail to a piece of string, lay down on the cornice, leaned over and tapped the window with the nail. Mrs Merriweather meanwhile was not asleep, but she followed him up, shut the trapdoor in the loft, and went back to bed. Merriweather concluded to giv’e it up and turn in, but to his dismay, the trap wouldn’t open. To make matters worse, a policeman, who had been watching him, felt certain he was a burglar, and began to practise at him with his revolver. The manner in which that old man dodged about chimneys, clad in that simple robe of white, would have done credit to a perfonYier on the flying trapeze. At last became to his trapdoor, and finding that it had been opened, he went down. On entering his bedroom he saw a man turning down the gas. As soon as he shouted “ Thieves!” the man also shouted, and the woman in the room gave a wild and awful yell. Then the man turned up the gas and seized a pistol, and, as Merriweather dashed down stairs, he perceived that he had got into the wrong house. As he flew to the parlour and hid under the sofa, the other man woke the whole neighbourhood with a rattle, and in ten minutes six policemen came in, and after a search dragged Merriweather out and marched him to the station-house. When he came out in the morning he walked home in a pair of the turnkey’s pants, and began to eat his breakfast without asking a blessing, and when Mrs Merriweather-inquired if his muttered i ejaculations of “ Fool!” and “ Idiot!” referred to her, he said she might wear them if they fitted her. He will probably not play any fresh practical jokes on Mrs Merri weather again soon.