PROGRESS IN BURGLARY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2737, 29 December 1881, Page 3

PROGRESS IN BURGLARY.

SECOND EDITION

In the bright lexicon of the modern burglar it is written that evil deeds love not darkness, but broad daylight. The fashionable hours for burglary are now from Bto 11 in the morning. In the slow going old times, before the profession had shaken off the cramping traditions handed down from a remote past, all reputable burglars plied their vocation in the darkest hours of the night, from midnight until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. These late hours wree extremely injurious to the health, and in conjunction with other risks, accidents and exposures incident to the profession, materially shortened the life of burglars as a class. Under the changing conditions and habits of society, it is now found entirely possible to avoid the evils of night work. Legal practitioners now do their professional work wholly in the day time, which enables them to give up their evenings to innocent and healthful recreation, and the hours of the night to refreshing sleep. Under this wiser regimen the longevity of burglars as set downfin life insurance tables may be expected to show a marked increase, and they will no longer be classed as an undesirable risk. The change in hours naturally involves some other radical changes, tinder the new system houses temporarily vacated by their tenants are usually selected as the field of operation. The summer is therefore the harvest season of the New York burglar. Favored by the fact that the people of this city have a habit of minding their own business closely, and know next to nothing of the affairs of their next-door neighbors, the burglar of the new school, who is not the lowbrowed, unshaven, and illfavored villain of the old times, but a well-dressed gentleman of easy manners and pleasing exterior, mounts the steps of a bouse on a fine morning with the air of a man just back from the country, opens the door with his skeleton key, enters, and spends an hour or two in making his selections from the clothing, jewelry, plate, and other valuables left in the house. By this time an express wagon is at the door, and two men, confederates of the operator inside the house, or perhaps genuine expressmen, are seen by the neighbors to bring two or three trunks from the house and drive off with them. The gentlemanly looking man soon after leaves the house and walks leisurely away, smoking a cigar or glancing over the morning paper as he goes. All this forms one of the commonest of sights in the streets of New York, and attracts no attention, oven from the police. —“New York Times.” A BUSY MAN. A Milwaukee man while in Chicago recently sent a bouquet of flowers to a relative in a Wisconsin town, and when he heard from them they had arrived four days after being shipped, willed and dead. He was mad, and in talking it over with a railroad man, the railroader said : “ You must not expect too much of an express agent. Now that bouquet had to pass Junction, and I know the express agent there. He is the depot agent, express agent, keeps a restaurant, is postmaster, acts as switchman, helps unload freight, checks baggage, keeps a general store, works a team on the road, drives passengers to adjoining towns, is sexton in a church, buys country produce, keeps the hay scales, runs the caucusses of both political parties, goes out shooting chickens with hunters, keeps a pool table, has a mill for grinding sugar cane, and runs a hop yard, besides helping his wife to run a millinery store. Now, a man that has as much business as that ought to be excused for letting a boquet remain in the express office a week or ten days. The nran who sent the bouquet said come to think of it they were mighty lucky to get the flowers at all, and he would apologize for any words he might have spoken in the heat of the debate. What the country wants is a diversity of industries. — “ Peck’s Sun.”