coeur dans la maturite." It is a "Pleasure of the Imagination" that can be
appreciated only by those like the old Scottish lawyer, who justified his
penurious prudence by saying that he had shaken hands with poverty up to
the elbow when he was young, and had no intention to renew the
acquaintance. We have not, at least in the Northern part of our country,
had the terrible experiences of the people of Europe, who are even now
hiding their money in a vague apprehension of danger, inherited from
centuries of rapine; but there are few of those who have given hostages to
fortune who have not had many hours, and even years, of distressing
anxiety concerning the future of their families. The greater the provision
made against this heart-corroding care by a people, the happier should
that people be.

It seems so unselfish a luxury to revel in these comfortable statistics,
that one is tempted to broaden his vision, and take in the four or five
billions of assets heaped up by the six or seven millions of people who
have insured their lives, and the one hundred and fifty or two hundred
millions of dollars paid out yearly to lighten the distress attending the
death of husbands and fathers of families,--to say nothing of a much
greater sum repaid policy-holders. In many cases, happily, death causes no
actual want; but against these cases we may offset the stupendous number
of policies insuring against industrial accidents, possibly twenty-five
millions of them, representing one quarter of the people of the
country--for we may be sure that there are few payments made under these
policies that do not actually alleviate suffering. We have here a colossal
aggregate of altruism on the part of the policy-holders, an intangible
national asset grander than all the material wealth which it represents;
for the sordid element in all these savings is necessarily small. There is
a point in the old story of the gambler on the Mississippi steamboat who
listened attentively to the persuasive arguments of a life-insurance
agent; he "allowed" that he was willing to bet on almost any kind of game,
but declined to take a hand in one where he had to die to win. It is
painful to think of the infinity of petty economies, of all the grievous
deprivations, the positive hardships, undergone in so many millions of
families, day by day, and year by year, to secure these policies of
insurance; but, as Plato said, "the good is difficult." There is no
heroism whe