That regurgitant cow at O'Leary's back gate, As she stood on the night of October the 8, When she kicked at the lamp that set fire to the barn That caused the Great Fire in Chicago! |THIS is the Statement the Company made: (Directors and Officers thickly arrayed, To soften the jar as they strike the up grade, Where the millions of losses will have to be paid.) "Our agency records, we deeply regret, Are burned at Chicago, are out in the wet, Or else there is, h--m, there is some slight impediment, Some something-or-other, some sand or some sediment Has got in the keyhole, disordered the lock, Or razeed the dividends, watered the stock, Or some trifling thing not yet quite in sight; But the _Company_, sir, is all right, is all right; [Illustration: 007] Our surplus is safe, and our stock is intact, Our losses are all reinsured--why, in fact, We never, in all our official career, Felt more gay and festive, more full of good cheer. Just put up the rates and go on with the biz, These losses will all be arranged with a whiz. The thing we will have straightened out in a jiffy, And the next that you'll hear will be ten per cent, divvy." But you ought to have seen them when, in the back room, They poured out anathemas like a mill-flume On that old Leary cow with the crumpled horn That kicked over the lamp that set fire to the barn That caused the Great Fire in Chicago! [Illustration: 008] |THIS is November, a month from the fire; And the ascertained losses reach higher and higher. As the figures go up the long faces go down, Till the month-ago-boaster appears like a clown. The trick of deception is voted a sham; The people say _fraud_, and the agents say --------, And the grim old receivers call round for the keys, The assets, the papers, the books, if you please. [Illustration: 009] Of all unwelcome things that this world ever saw, The bitterest is a compulsory _craw_. For a large-swelling dignity, proud and high born, Who claims that his status is bright as the morn, To get down and meekly acknowledge the corn, And squeeze himself through the small end of a horn, Suggests that a little less premature crowing, A little more system, a little more knowing, Some better kept books and more accurate showing, Are best, in the long run, for our underwriters, To save them the sneers and the jeers of backbiters, The scoffs of the public, the quips of the writers, And a toss from the cow with the crumpled horn That kicked over the lamp that set fire to the barn That caused the Great Fire in Chicago! [Illustration: 010] |THIS is the Claimant, so pure and so mild, With his heart and his manners as bland as a child, Whose amiability never is riled, And whose modest demands with his loss proofs are filed. His property cost, as he shows from his deeds, A sum which ten thousand times over exceeds The mite of insurance for which he now pleads. His goods, to be sure, they were mostly sold out;