"In the early days, Mr. Garvie remembers when three busloads of Porter School girls from Farmington drove into the city to inspect the new home. The house was not quite finished, and they ran about the place, examining every nook and corner from the cellar to garret. Some doors were being fitted the day of their visit, and while the wood was of the most common domestic variety, the girls were told it came from a strange island in the South Seas once visited by Mark Twain. Mr. Garvie says that he suspects some of these pieces are still preserved as rare relics but they are in truth just ordinary white pine.

Mark Twain equipped the house with a burglar alarm, and Mr. Garvie recalls many amusing incidents in connection with its installation and early operation. When the apparatus was finally in working order and at about the time the family moved in, workmen occasionally left downstairs windows open. On one particular day, Mr. Clemens told several of them that there was a very dangerous man in the neighborhood who was seen prowling about the house, and he wanted it distinctly understood that all windows must be closed and fastened.

The man, Mr. Garvie says Mr. Clemens told them, was trying to get into the house to see what was going on, and he had no intention of admitting him and would chase him off the grounds if he saw him idling about. The curiosity of the workmen was considerably aroused as the identity of the 'dangerous man' was not revealed, making the mystery all the more intriguing.

After some little time, the 'prowler' was uncovered. It was Henry Ward Beecher. Mark Twain would not admit him until everything in the house was just so and looking its very best, Mr. Garvie remembers."