Martin of the bridge once said to me, when I asked him if he could not tell me some of the interesting things about it that usually escaped the ordinary observer:

"There isn't much to be said. The bridge is a very prosaic thing."

I have no doubt it is to Mr. Martin. He concerns himself with abstract mathematical formulas a good deal. He knows about the tangents and sines and cosines and curves and strains and all that, which some of us grown-up people studied about in college, and have been glad to forget in our humdrum lives since. When I asked Mr. Martin, however, if he knew where Cobweb Lane was, he smiled, and said he didn't. He showed in that way that the bridge was a very prosaic thing to him; but I am sure that if you take no thought of mathematics, and look for the beautiful and interesting things about the bridge, you will be convinced that the bridge is not prosaic after all. A visit to Cobweb Lane will prove it.

THE WESTBRIDGE BURGLAR ALARM.

BY WILLIAM DRYSDALE.

"I wonder we didn't think of it long ago. Why, we can sit in our rooms and talk to each other as well as if we were together. The whole outfit won't cost us more than fifteen dollars."

Tom Dailey began to drum telegraphic dots and dashes on the table with the ends of his fingers. He had just unfolded to his two particular chums his plan of connecting all their houses with a telegraph line, and the boys agreed that a telegraph line was precisely the thing they needed.

"I'm ready to begin right away," said Harry Barker. "The sooner we have it working, the better."

"It's very easily learned," Tom continued. "You can learn the alphabet in an hour or two, and after a week's practice you can read the sounder slowly. Our houses stand just right for it, too."

Tom was certainly correct about that. Their houses were in a cluster in the suburbs of Westbridge, two on one side of the broad avenue, and one just across the way, with only about five hundred feet of space between them.

"It would be a grand thing," Joe said, after deliberating a little, "but I don't know whether I can get father to advance me the cash. That canoe about used up my money, and I may have trouble to get any money for a while."

"No, you won't!" Tom exclaimed, very decidedly. "You'll not have any trouble at all to get money for a telegraph line. I've thought that all out. You see, this thing is not just a toy to play with; it's for real use. You know what the worst drawback is to living here half a mile out of town; it's burglars, isn't it? That's what we always have to be looking out for, specially since they broke into your house two years ago, and took all your silverware. And I'd like to know what better burglar alarm we could have than a telegraph line between our houses."

The three families all took kindly to the telegraph idea, for they said that it would be a great convenience to them in asking and answering questions, and would save them many a step. Besides, if a burglar should visit any of the houses it would be such a consolation to know that they could call assistance in a few seconds. Tom and Harry put little tables close by their beds to hold the key and sounder, but Joe had to make other arrangements. His mother was afraid to have the wire so close to his head for fear it might conduct the lightning when there was a thunderstorm, so it was decided that his work-room over the kitchen should also be his telegraph-office. That was the room where he kept his printing-press and his carpenter's bench, and the turning lathe that he had saved up for months to buy.

This work-room was too far from Joe's sleeping-room for him to hear the click of the sounder if the other boys should call him at night; but Harry got his friend the operator to help put up the line, and the operator made an ingenious arrangement by which a little electric bell was rung in the work-room whenever any of the keys were used. By leaving the door open this bell could be heard.

"Ain't it grewh!" Harry clicked off after the boys had been practising a few days, meaning to say "Ain't it great!"

"Biggryf thirg out," Tom ticked in reply, imagining that he had said "Biggest thing out."

But they soon did better than that, and in the course of a week or two they were talking over the wire almost as glibly as though they were in the same room. Their mothers and sisters were delighted with it, for Mrs. Dailey found that without the trouble of going out she could ask Mrs. Barker just how much flour to put in those new ginger-snaps, and the girls made frequent appointments to walk down town together—all by telegraph.

The line was so successful that the boys had to talk with their schoolmates about it, and through them the news reached the reporter of the Westbridge Eagle, and he put a paragraph in the paper about it.

"Our young townsmen Tom Dailey and Harry Barker and Joe Bailey," the Eagle said, "have added materially to the comfort and safety of their respective families by putting up a telegraph line and burglar alarm between their houses. It is a regularly equipped line, with an office in each house. Td is the office call of young Dailey, Hb of Barker, and Jb of Master Bailey. The instruments are in the boys' sleeping-rooms, except Barker's; he uses his workshop for the purpose, and an electric bell gives warning when he is wanted. Burglars will give those three houses a wide berth in the future."

"Give us a wide berth!" Tom exclaimed. "Well, I guess they will! They wouldn't have any chance at all. Father always keeps a revolver in his room, and I have my baseball bat. Now mind, fellows, if we hear a burglar at night, we send an alarm first thing, and the minute we get an alarm we call our fathers. I guess a burglar would soon wish he was somewhere else."

"I have a baseball bat all ready at the head of the bed too," said Harry. "Do you suppose it would kill a man to hit him over the head with it, Tom? I shouldn't like to kill a man, not even a burglar. I guess I'd give him a rap over the shoulders. But I'm afraid father would fire some bullets into him before I had a chance."

"I almost wish we'd have a chance," Joe put in. "But, of course, there won't be any burglars around, now that we're all ready for them."

However, burglars are a little uncertain in their ways, and it is not well to feel too secure. Perhaps it was even while the boys were talking that two rough-looking fellows had their heads together in the back room of a disreputable saloon in Westbridge making plans. One was older than the other, and the younger had a copy of the Westbridge Eagle in his hands, occasionally reading a little here and there. These two fellows were burglars in a small way; and burglars, like other people, get a great deal of information out of the newspapers. When they see that "John Smith and family have gone to the Catskills; the house is closed for the summer," they find it more interesting news than the latest election returns.

"Oh, pshaw!" the younger burglar exclaimed, as his eye fell upon the paragraph about the boys' telegraph line—only he used language better suited to a burglar sitting in a saloon; "those fellows have put up a burglar alarm."

"What, at the three houses!" the other exclaimed. "Let me see;" and he snatched the paper rudely from the younger man's hand. "Oh, my, my, my!" he went on, after he had read the paragraph; "that's the neatest thing I ever saw in my life." And he leaned back in his chair, and chuckled as merrily as if he had been an honest man.

"I don't see anything to laugh about," said the younger. "We've spent over a week getting the lay of the land out there, and now all that labor is lost. We'll have to try somewhere else."

"Will we?" said the older man, chuckling again. "You only think so because you're young at the business. Jest leave this thing to me, my child. I know'd