The Automatic Suitor-Smacker

A pale-faced man, who looked as though he supped with sorrow every week, lived out on North Hill with his wife and seven daughters. With all these seven lovely daughters, he had only one front gate, and that made him pale. After much expense and struggle, he finally constructed a new gate—a massive, ornamented thing with a small brass plate marked '130 pounds.' The daughters didn't know what it meant until one evening, when a suitor leaned his weight upon it. A trapdoor in the post flew open, and a many-jointed steel arm with a large iron knob struck the suitor with a resounding, drum-like explosion. The father, lurking in the shadows, watched as three separate young men were successively swatted away by the gate's mechanical arm. He rose from the dark, looking at the mechanism that pulled an ounce of weight over 130 pounds, feeling a sense of ineffable peace. The struggle of a lifetime was ended, and a gate had been discovered that could set at naught the oppressions of thoughtless young people.