Murray was just sitting down to dinner, but Beckford insisted that he should return with him immediately.
“You’ve got to straighten this matter out!” he told him excitedly. “You’ve got to give her all the insurance she wants without any restrictions! Make it fifty thousand dollars if she wants it! I’ll pay the premiums, if we have to starve!”
“But I can’t give her a policy to-night!” protested Murray.
“You can tell her about it to-night, can’t you?” demanded Beckford. “And you can take her application to-night, can’t you? Why, man, she has convinced herself that she’s going to die in a week! We can settle the details later, but we’ve got to do something to-night.”
“Oh, well, I’ll come immediately after dinner,” said Murray.
“You come now!” cried Beckford. “If you talk dinner to me, I’ll brain you! Insurance has made a wreck of me already.”
“I haven’t been getting much joy out of this particular case myself,” grumbled Murray, but he went along.
The moment he reached home, Beckford rushed to his wife’s room.
“It’s all a mistake!” he exclaimed joyfully. “You – you mustn’t cry any more, dearest, for it’s all right now. Mr. Murray didn’t understand at first – thought you were one of these capricious, careless, thoughtless women that do all sorts of absurd and foolish things on impulse – but he knows better now. There aren’t any more restrictions for you than for me, and he’s waiting in the parlor to take your application for all the insurance you want.”
“Really?” she asked, as the sobs began to subside.
“Really.”
“And there isn’t anything the matter with me?”
“Of course not, sweetheart.”
“Well,” she said, after a pause, “I can’t see him now, because my eyes are all red, but I wish he’d write that out for me. I’d feel so much more comfortable.”
“Indeed he will,” asserted Beckford, “and we can fill out the application in here, and I’ll take it back to him.”
Hopefully and happily the young husband returned to Murray and told him what was wanted. Murray sighed dismally. He had missed his dinner for a woman’s whim, and the woman was merely humiliating him. Still, he felt in a measure responsible for the trouble; he ought never to have resorted to duplicity, even for so laudable a purpose. So he wrote the following: “Investigation has convinced me that the restrictions mentioned this afternoon are unnecessary in your case, and I shall be glad to have your application for insurance on the same terms as your husband’s.”
Mrs. Beckford read this over carefully. Then she read the application blank with equal care. After that she wrote at the bottom of the note: “Insurance has almost given me nervous prostration now, and I don’t want to have anything more to do with it. If Harry can stand the strain, let him have it all.”
“Give him that, Harry,” she said, “and get rid of him as soon as possible, for I want you to come back and comfort me. I’m completely upset.”
Murray lit a cigar when he reached the street, and puffed at it meditatively as he walked in the direction of the nearest street-car line.
“What’s the matter with nervous prostration for me?” he muttered. “One more effort to defeat a woman who is fighting against her own interests will make me an impossible risk in any company; two more will land me in a sanatorium.”
AN INCIDENTAL QUESTION
Dave Murray, general agent, leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at the young man before him.
“So you have run up against an unanswerable argument?” he remarked.
“It seems so to me,” said the inexperienced Owen Ross.
“My dear boy,” asserted Murray, “in the life insurance business the only unanswerable argument is a physician’s report that the applicant is not a good risk. What is the particular thing that has put you down and out?”
“Faith,” replied the young man; “just plain faith in the Almighty. Perhaps, some time in your career, you have run across a religious enthusiast who considers it a reflection on the all-seeing wisdom of the Almighty to take any measures for his own protection or the protection of his family.”
“I have,” admitted Murray, “but generally it has been a woman.”
“This is a man,” said Ross; “a sincere, devout man. If he were a hypocrite, it would be different, but it is a matter of religious conviction – a principle of faith – with him to trust in the Lord. Life insurance he considers almost sacrilegious – an evidence of man’s doubt in the wisdom of his Maker, and an attempt, in his puny insignificant way, to interfere with the plans of the Great Master. To all arguments he replies, ‘The Lord will provide for His children.’”
“And you consider that unanswerable?” asked Murray.
“In his case, yes. Even his wife is unable to move him, although she wants insurance as a provision for the future of the children and was instrumental in getting me to talk to him. How would you answer such a contention as that?”
“I wouldn’t answer it; I would agree with him.”
“And give up?”
“Quite the contrary. While there can be no doubt that he is right as far as he goes, he does not go far enough. I would turn his own argument against him.” Murray leaned forward in his chair and spoke with earnest deliberation. “The Lord provides for His children through human instrumentality. Why should not the man be the human instrument through which the Lord provides for that man’s family? The Lord does not directly intervene – at least, not in these days. If, in the hour of extremity, an unexpected legacy should come to relieve the necessities of that man’s family, he would say the Lord had provided. But it would be through human instrumentality: the legacy, and the method and law by which it reached them would be essentially human. If, when poverty knocks at the door, some generous philanthropist were moved to come to their relief, he would hold again that the Lord had provided; if some wealthy relative sought them out, it would be through the intervention of the Lord; if, through his own wise action, they are saved from want, is he more than the human instrument through which the Lord provides? May not an insurance company be the chosen instrument? I say this with all due reverence, and it seems to me to answer his objections fully. Is it only in unforeseen ways that He cares for His children? Has He nothing to do with those cases in which reasonable precautions are taken by the children themselves?”
Ross, the young solicitor, looked at his chief with unconcealed admiration.
“By George!” he exclaimed, “you’ve got the theory of this business down to a science. I’ll try the man again.”
“It’s not a business,” retorted Murray somewhat warmly, for this was a point that touched his pride; “it is a profession – at least, it lies with the man himself to make it a business or a profession, according to his own ability and character. There are small men who make a business of the law, and there are great men who make a profession of it; there are doctors to whom medicine is a mere commercial pursuit, and there are doctors to whom it is a study, a science, a profession. You may make of life insurance a cheap business, or you may make of it a dignified profession; you may be a mere annoying canvasser, or you may be a man who commands respect; but, to be really successful, you must have, or acquire, a technical knowledge of the basis of insurance, a knowledge of law, and, above all, a knowledge of human