ere trifle.
And then we pay enormous dividends, so that you have so much security
at such a little outlay that you can be perfectly comfortable and
happy."

_Butterwick_. "But I don't want to be comfortable and happy. I'm
trying to be miserable."

_Gunn_. "Now, look at this thing in a practical light. You've got to
die some time or other. That is a dreadful certainty to which we must
all look forward. It is fearful enough in any event, but how much more
so when a man knows that he leaves nothing behind him! We all shrink
from death, we all hate to think of it; the contemplation of it fills
us with awful dread; but reflect, what must be the feelings of the
man who enters the dark valley with the assurance that in a pecuniary
sense his life has been an utter failure? Think how--"

_Butterwick_. "Don't scare me a bit. I want to die; been wanting to
die for years. Rather die than live any time."

_Gunn_. "I say, think how wretched will be the condition of those dear
ones whom you leave behind you! Will not the tears of your heartbroken
widow be made more bitter by the poverty in which she is suddenly
plunged, and by the reflection that she is left to the charity of a
cold and heartless world. Will not--"

_Butterwick_. "I wouldn't leave her a cent if I had millions. It'll
do the old woman good to skirmish around for her living. Then she'll
appreciate me."

_Gunn_. "Your poor little children, too. Fatherless, orphaned, they
will have no one to fill their famished mouths with bread, no one to
protect them from harm. You die uninsured, and they enter a life of
suffering from the keen pangs of poverty. You insure in our company,
and they begin life with enough to feed and clothe them, and to raise
them above the reach of want."

_Butterwick_. "I don't want to raise them above the reach of want. I
want them to want. Best thing they can do is to tucker down to work as
I did"

_Gunn_. "Oh, Mr. Butterwick, try to take a higher view of the matter.
When you are an angel and you come back to revisit the scenes of
earth, will it not fill you with sadness to see your dear ones exposed
to the storm and the blast, to hunger and cold?"

_Butterwick_. "I'm not going to be an angel; and if I was, I wouldn't
come back."

_Gunn_. "You are a poor man now. How do you know that your family will
have enough when you are gone to pay your funeral expenses, to bury
you decently?"

_Butterwick_. "I don't want to be buried."

_Gunn_.