Miss Jennie Thwarts Burglar With Meat Horn, Intruder Gets No Booty

From The Daily Republican – August 6, 1881:

Another Sneak

Saturday morning about two o’clock, a sneak thief entered the residence of Mr. Ben Phillips, on Chess Street, through an open back window. He was in the young ladies sleeping room when discovered, and was scared away before getting any booty, by Miss Jennie blowing a meat horn, which she keeps ready for use, in case of any needed alarm daring the night. The ladies of the family are much alone, and this meat horn idea is a capital one.

Just think of a burglar tip-toeing about in the watches of silent night, a dark lantern in one hand, and a big pistol in the other, peeping here and there in a lady’s bed room, looking for a pocket-book or jewel case. He sees the glitter of a bracelet, sits down his glim, sticks his sick shooter in his pocket, stoops over a dressing case, his fingers rapidly closing in on the trinkets and engagement rings, when “Toot, TOOT,” a noise as if seven million fog horns had broken loose, greets him, scares him, petrifies him. Fear, fright, terror, dismay, alarm, consternation— and away he goes, as if the Devil and Tom Pepper were after him.

Mean while the girls sit up in bed and blow the old tin screech horn till their cheeks bulge out like apple dumplings; yea, even like the priests who blew down the walls of Jerico. A tin horn may not carry as far as a pistol, but it is more effective at short range with a scared girl at one end of it.

Oh, how we ache to write the item when one of these chaps shall have been shot — “A Sneak Thief Caught – He will Sneak no more—Not Much—Not this Evening — His Bowels Blasted out with a Blunderbuss – Gone to Meet the Hades Boss in a Land which is Hotter than This.”