"Not exactly," the little man leaned forward confidentially. "We are more concerned with their mental state. You probably know that when a person is adjudged mentally incompetent or even gravely 'insecure,' the state takes over the care and support of such a person and The Company is released from financial obligation to that person. As a tremendous taxpayer, The Company aids in state support, but not to the extent of, shall we say, a perpetual annuity." "Oh, I see. The company is feeling the pinch of a few long-term payments to those subjects of ours and would like to have them put away to cut expenses?" Dr. Farrar could not completely keep the scorn out of his voice. "Oh, no, Doctor. You misunderstand me completely." Brill's tones were rich with wounded innocence. "The Company only wants to know what are the probabilities of mental breakdown at different ages, say a hundred and sixty, a hundred and eighty, two hundred. If we had some assurance of even a slight but definite tendency to, shall we say, mental erosion, with an increase in age above a hundred and fifty, The Company might find it possible to continue some such annuity plan as is now in operation." The man talked like an annual report, it seemed to Dr. Farrar, but with the difference that it had something to do with him. "You or your medical colleagues," Brill went on brightly, "have done humanity yeoman service. Not only have you lengthened life and made living it less painful, but you have reduced the consumer-costs of life insurance to a level which makes premiums ridiculously low. Of course," he added complacently, "this has resulted in a great increase in the number of the insured and the size and scope of The Company." "But if people are going to live forever, your company is going to have to discontinue the annuity system, is that it?" Dr. Farrar asked pointedly. "You'd leave the old folks cut off from jobs by custom and from any other income by expediency?" * * * * * Jeremy Brill was suddenly serious. "The problem of the support of paupers is hardly the immediate responsibility of Far-Western. Besides," he added hopefully, "by the time the thirty-year olders whose policies we would have to refuse to write now are old enough to worry about it, our society will no doubt have found some way for them to maintain their independence. I have the greatest faith in you social researchers, so great that my company can surely feel free to turn that problem over to you with utter confidence. "And perhaps, as a matter of fact," he continued, "you can already tell me that there is little hope that man can pass his two-hundredth year without serious impairment of his faculties, and we shall only have to raise the age at which annuities begin to pay. The Company naturally prefers the gentle road of reform to the cataclysm of revolution." He relaxed after this burst of metaphor.