[To the Editor of the Seim-mom] Sm.--The man that knocked
me down and was the cause of my right leg being amputated behaved with the most admirable sang-froid. I mean that he was neither cold-blooded, nor did his blood run cold. He merely took the thing calmly, expressed his respect in the politest terms, referred me to his insurance company, straightened out his mud-guard and drove off rather faster than he had ever driven before. Ile is now probably apologising to someone else upon whom he has conferred a similar favour.
I am now a man of independent means living in comfort upon the contributions that incompetence and rashness have made to an insurance company and the insurance company hands DTI to me.
I used to think that the loss of a limb might well prove a blessing in removing some of the complexities that faced me. Deprived of the faculty of earning my living as a tight-rope walker, I should no longer have my mind divided between the relative merits of a sedentary and an active life. I should, I supposed, be as happy, if not happier, as rich, if not richer, if by the force of circumstances I were compelled to earn my living by writing "The Reminiscences of a Tight-rope Walker." Compulsory insurance had not then been thought oh'.
Now, in one swift and terrifying moment, I am become a man of leisure. Nothing will induce me to do a jot of work again. I warn you that I shall probably write to 7'he Timex periodically, but that is all. And my benefactor, safe in the knowledge that his responsibility ends with the payment of a pre , will go bouncing on front pedestrian to pedestrian. He is like the young scamp who relies upon his father to settle his debts, paying an occasional premium in the form of a filial gesture or a word of repentance.
In Erewhon, whose inhabitants have degenerated somewhat since Samuel Butler visited them, I found during a recent visit that there was a great outcry against the abnormal increase in the number of illegitimate births. The cause was not far to seek, but had escaped the notice of all Erewhonian sociologists. Some legislator, in the fullness of his heart and with the praise- worthy intention of lightening the load of the individual 111141 comforting the outcast and the sinner, had introduced a system of compulsory insurance against the risk of illegitimate off- spring. The scheme was popular, except among the insurance companies.
" A fine idea," you will say, " to make the State, acting through its instruments the insurance companies, the father of these poor children. What could be better calculated to make good citizens of them ? " The Communists' plan scents to me as good. The results are numerous in either case.
I said that the natives of Erewhon are degenerate. The next visitor will find them almost wholly illegitimate as well, and will be glad to return to a country whose inhabitants will also be parasites of one or more colossal insurance companies, not through any accident of birth but through the hazards of the road, which will have left them for the most part maimed and
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