Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

valued at! Ten millions of francs!”

“Yes–now she is.”

“And oh, Georgy, how divinely beautiful she is!”

“Ah, yes but nothing to what she was before that blessed John Smith broke

her leg and battered her nose. Ingenious Smith!–gifted Smith!–noble

Smith! Author of all our bliss! Hark! Do you know what that wheeze

means? Mary, that cub has got the whooping-cough. Will you never learn

to take care of the children!”

THE END

The Capitoline Venus is still in the Capitol at Rome, and is still the

most charming and most illustrious work of ancient art the world can

boast of. But if ever it shall be your fortune to stand before it and go

into the customary ecstasies over it, don’t permit this true and secret

history of its origin to mar your bliss–and when you read about a

gigantic Petrified man being dug up near Syracuse, in the State of New

York, or near any other place, keep your own counsel–and if the Barnum

that buried him there offers to sell to you at an enormous sum, don’t you

buy. Send him to the Pope!

[NOTE.–The above sketch was written at the time the famous swindle of

the

“Petrified Giant” was the sensation of the day in the United States]

SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE

DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, OF LONDON

GENTLEMEN: I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished

guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance center has

extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of

brothers working sweetly hand in hand–the Colt’s Arms Company making the

destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life insurance citizens

paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating

their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades

taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to assist in welcoming our

guest first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of

hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he

is in sympathy with insurance and has been the means of making may other

men cast their sympathies in the same direction.

Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance

line of business–especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been

a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a

better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a

kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their

horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest–as an

advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care

for politics–even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there

is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.

There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an

entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon

of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in

their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience

of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a

freshly mutilated man’s face when he feels in his vest pocket with his

remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen

nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer’s

face when he found he couldn’t collect on a wooden leg.

I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity

which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY –[The

speaker is a director of the company named.]–is an institution which is

peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to prosper who gives it

his custom.

No man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year

is out. Now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so

often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite

left him, he ceased to smile– life was but a weariness. Three weeks ago

I got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit

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