ters and the other sounds of
the larger room outside. As Mr. Osgood seated himself a trifle stiffly
in his wide desk chair, Smith looked at him affectionately. The
reflection came into his mind that the old gentleman was just a little
older than when they had last met, and the thought gave a pang.

Silas Osgood was nearing his seventieth year. A long life of kindly
and gentle thinking, of clean and correct living, had left him at this
age as clear-eyed and direct of gaze as a child, but the veins showed
blue in the rather frail hands, and the face was seamed with tiny
wrinkles. Mr. Osgood had been in business in the fire insurance world
of Boston for almost half a century. He was as well known as the very
pavement of Kilby Street, that great local artery of insurance life,
and the pulse of that life beat in him as strongly as his own.

To be an insurance man--and by that is meant primarily a fire insurance
man--is in New England no mean or casual thing. South, West, in the
newer and more open lands, where traditions are fewer and there is less
time for the dignities and observance of the amenities of commerce,
fire insurance takes its chance with a thousand other roads to an
honest dollar. If a Western lawyer has a few spare hours, he hangs out
an insurance sign and between briefs he or his clerk writes policies.
The cashier of the Farmers' State Bank in the prairie town ekes out his
small salary with the commissions he receives as agent for a few
companies. If a grist-mill owner or a storekeeper has a busy corner of
two Southern streets where passers-by congregate on market day, he gets
the representation of a fire company or two, and from time to time
sends in a risk to the head office, whose underwriters go nearly
frantic in endeavoring to decipher the hidden truth in the dusty
reports of these well-intentioned amateurs.

But it is not so in New England. In New England fire insurance reaches
its proudest estate. It is a profession, and to its true votaries
almost a religion. Its sons have, figuratively speaking, been born
with a rate book in one hand and a blank proof-of-loss clutched tightly
in the other. And in the mouth a silver spoon or not, as the case
might be, but in any event a conclusive argument for the superior
loss-paying ability and liberality in adjustment of the companies they
respectively represent. They are fire insurance men by birth,
education, and tradition--they and their fathers b