SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE. 



DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, OF LONDON. 



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 compa*iy 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 here- 

 after. I am glad to assist in welcoming our guest — first, because he is an English- 

 man, 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. 



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 affection- 

 tionate 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. 



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 



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