In these and other adventures or _mis_-adventures, I need not say I was never killed, though the escapes were narrow. To say they were providential escapes would be to come under the rebuke of Archbishop Whately, who, when a curate reported himself as providentially saved from the terrible wreck of the _Amazon_, asked: "I to understand that all less fortunate passengers were providentially drowned?" The belief that the Deity is capricious or partial in His mercies is a form of holy egotism which better deserves indictment than many errors of speech which have been so visited. I have no theory of my many exemptions from fatal consequences. All I can say is that, had I been a saint, I could not have been more fortunate. CHAPTER XXXVI. LIMPING THRIFT Thrift is so excellent a thing--is so much praised by moralists, so much commended by advisers of the people, and is of so much value to the poor who practise it--that it is strange to see it retarded by the caprices of those who take credit and receive it, for promoting the necessary virtues. Insurance societies continue to recommend themselves by praising prudence and forethought which provides for the future. Everybody knows that those who do not live within their income live upon others who trust them. Those who spend all their income forget that if others did as they do, there would be universal indigence. Insurance companies are supposed to provide inducements to thrift, whereas they put wanton obstacles in its way. He who takes out a policy on his life finds it a condition that if he commits suicide his policy will be forfeited--the assumption of insurance offices being that if a man insures his life he intends to cut his throat. Can this be true? What warrant of experience is there for this expectation? Is not the natural, the instinctive, the universal love of life security sufficient against self-slaughter? If life be threatened, do not the most thoughtless persons make desperate effort to preserve it? Is it necessary for insurance societies to come forward to supplement incentives of nature? Is not the fact that a man is provident-minded enough to think of insuring his life, proof enough that his object is to live? Answers to a series of questions are demanded from an insurer, which average persons do not possess the knowledge to answer with exactitude; yet failure in any fact or detail renders the policy void, although a person has paid premiums upon it for thirty or forty years.