By this means, he could let down a basket or any other article into the street, or draw up whatever he desired; and as he proposed using this outlet as the sole means of communication with the external world when his house was closed, he had a wooden shutter made in the form of a trap-door, which he could open and shut at pleasure.
Here it was his intention to station himself at certain hours of the day, and whenever he held any communication below, to flash off a pistol, so that the smoke of the powder might drive back the air, and purify any vapour that found entrance of its noxious particles.
He laid down to himself a number of regulations, which will be more easily shown and more clearly understood, on arriving at the period when his plans came to be in full operation.

To give an instance, however--if a letter should be conveyed to him by means of the pulley, he proposed to steep it in a solution of vinegar and sulphur; and when dried and otherwise fumigated, to read it at a distance by the help of strong glasses.
In regard to provisions, after a careful calculation, he bought upwards of three thousand pounds' weight of hard sea-biscuits, similar to those now termed captain's biscuits, and had them stowed away in hogsheads.

He next ordered twenty huge casks of the finest flour, which he had packed up with the greatest care, as if for a voyage to Barbadoes or Jamaica.
As these were brought in through the yard an accident had well-nigh occurred which might have proved fatal to him.

While superintending the labours of Leonard and Blaize, who were rolling the casks into the house--having stowed away as many as he conveniently could in the upper part of the premises--he descended to the cellar, and, opening a door at the foot of a flight of steps leading from the yard, called to them to lower the remaining barrels with ropes below.

In the hurry, Blaize rolled a cask towards the open door, and in another instant it would have fallen upon the grocer, and perhaps have crushed him, but for the interposition of Leonard.