<h2> <SPAN name="insurance" id="insurance"></SPAN>SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE </h2>
<h3> DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, OF LONDON </h3>
<p><br/></p>
<p>GENTLEMEN: I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished
guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance center has
extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of
brothers working sweetly hand in hand—the Colt's Arms Company making
the destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life insurance
citizens paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson
perpetuating their memory with his stately monuments, and our
fire-insurance comrades taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to
assist in welcoming our guest—first, because he is an Englishman,
and I owe a heavy debt of hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen;
and secondly, because he is in sympathy with insurance and has been the
means of making many other men cast their sympathies in the same
direction.</p>
<p>Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance
line of business—especially accident insurance. Ever since I have
been a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a
better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a
kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their
horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest—as an
advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care
for politics—even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now
there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.</p>
<p>There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an
entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon
of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in
their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience of
life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a
freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his
remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen
nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's
face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg.</p>
<p>I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity which
we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY—[The speaker
is a director of the company named.]—is an institution which is
peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to prosper who gives it his
custom.</p>
<p>No man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year is
out. Now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so often
with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite left
him, he ceased to smile—life was but a weariness. Three weeks ago I
got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit in
this land—has a good steady income and a stylish suit of new
bandages every day, and travels around on a shutter.</p>
<p>I will say, in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is
none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I
can say the same for the rest of the speakers.</p>
<p><br/></p>
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