160 Fulton Street, | | | | NEW YORK. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | GEO. B. BOWLEND, | | | | Draughtsman & Designer | | | | No. 160 Fulton Street, | | | | Room No. 11, NEW YORK. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD. AN ADAPTATION. BY ORPHEUS C. KERR. CHAPTER XVII. INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. Six months had come and gone and done it; the weather was as inordinately hot as it had before been intolerably cold; and the Reverend OCTAVIUS SIMPSON stood waiting, in the gorgeous Office of the Boreal Life Insurance Company, New York, for the appearance of Mr. MELANCTHON SCHENCK. Having been directed by a superb young clerk, who parted his hair in the middle, to "just stand out of the passage-way and amuse yourself with one of our Schedules for awhile," until the great life-Agent should come in, the Gospeler read a few schedulistic pages, proving, that if a person had his life Insured at the age of Thirty, and paid his premiums regularly until he was Eighty-five, the cost to him and profit to the Company would, probably, be much more than the amount he had insured for. It must, then, be evident to him, that, upon his death, at Ninety, the Company would have received, in all, sufficient funds from him to pay the full amount of his Policy to the lady whom he had always introduced as his wife, and still retain enough to declare a handsome Dividend for itself. Such was the sound business-principle upon which the Boreal was conducted; and the merest child must perceive, that only the extremely unlikely coincidence of at least four insurers all dying before Eighty-five could endanger the solvency of the beneficent institution.--Having mastered this convincing argument, and become greatly confused by its plausibility, Mr. SIMPSON next gave some attention to what was going on around him in the Office, and allowed his overwrought mind to relax cheerfully in contemplation thereof. One of human nature's peculiarities was quite amusingly exemplified in the different treatment accorded to callers who were "safe risks," and to those who were not. Thus, the whisper of "Here comes old Tubercles, again!" was prevalent amongst the clerks upon the entrance of a very