Cy Warman

“ A neat card had been posted to prominent banking houses in the city and to country bankers round about, so that every man present was intensely interested in the performance. There were bank managers, cashiers, paying tellers and clerks, all waiting eagerly for the show to begin.
In the front row of chairs there were three men who were not bankers: a detective, a burglar, and a struggling author, who sees the inside of a bank only once in a great while, when he goes in to cash a cheque that comes to him from some one of the magazines. ”

“ Presently, when about half of the chairs had been filled, a nervous man in a fur coat pounded the floor with a heavy stick, after the way of the gallery god, and immediately a man came from a rear room, leaped lightly upon the stage, hit the safe a rap or two with a hard hammer, and asked any man in the audience who might doubt the tangibility of the strong box to come forward and examine it. ”

“ To do this act properly a man wants a private railway carriage, same as a theatrical star, to carry his outfit. An operator will be obliged to remain in each town three or four days, running up hotel bills, which he must necessarily jump, and so get a bad name, to put up his plant. You see the ordinary electric light current will not do the work. I tried it once, and successfully, too, but I found afterwards that the safe was a big paper imitation vault that a sharper had used in a buncum bank at Brumingham. ”

“ A better one will sound a gong in the street. A still more elaborate system will sound a number of gongs, and if those interested could spare the price, no doubt the company would provide a system that, in addition to sounding the gongs, would ring the fire, church, and school bells, and assemble the Vigilance Committee (which is an important part of the system) in the public square. ”

“ There's too much machinery. Over against that wall, whence comes the song of the running brook, there is a huge tank, or rather a trough, and in that trough are miles of resistance coils, carefully packed out of sight, and there are tons of other paraphernalia, to say nothing of wiring the building, which is apt to attract the notice of the employés. ”