Life insurance -- Fiction; Life insurance agents -- Fiction; Short stories
When the news came to Adolph, however, there was wailing prolonged, for
his policy was annulled.
“I bet you,” said Adolph, “that feller Murray put up the job. He iss a
great hog; he iss like those mono_pol_ists that puts smaller people out
of business and gobbles it all.”
Then Adolph got a pencil and a sheet of paper and began to figure his
losses.
“_Zwei_ t’ousand dollar insurance,” he groaned, “and maybe she wouldn’t
lif long. And I gif her a dress, too—a new dress. _Ach, Himmel!_ it’s
hard when a man’s vife beats him. A new dress for nothing at all but to
looss money. That law iss a shame. It iss a—what you call
it?—restriction of business.”
Thereafter, for some time, the sight of the new gown would make Adolph
morose and gloomy, and his friends found him unusually modest and
unobtrusive.
AN INCIDENTAL SCHEME
There came to Dave Murray one day a young man who was looking for a job.
He was a bright young fellow and seemed to be very earnest.
“I have been a clerk,” he explained, “but there is little prospect for
the future where I am now, and I want to get something that has some
promise in it. In fact, I must do so. I am making barely enough to
support my mother and myself, and I may want to marry, you know.”
Murray readily admitted that young men frequently were attacked by the
matrimonial bacillus and that, there being no sure antidote, the disease
had to run its course. “Which is a good thing for the world,” he added,
“so you are quite right to prepare yourself for the attack. But are you
sure that insurance is your field?”
“I have given the subject a good deal of thought,” was the reply, “and
insurance interests me.”
“That’s a good sign,” commented Murray. “Success is for the man who is
interested in his work, and not merely in the financial results of that
work.”
“Oh, I want to make money, too,” said the young man frankly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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