Insurance Agent: But if your house burns without insurance it will be a total loss.
House Owner: Beg your pardon by your own actuary's tables I shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I would otherwise have paid to you amounting to more than the face of the policy they would have bought. But suppose it to burn before the time upon which your figures are based. If I could afford that, how could you?
Insurance Agent: Oh, we would make ourselves even from our luckier ventures with other clients. Virtually, they pay your loss.
House Owner: And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their losses? Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before they have paid you as much as you must pay them? The case stands this way: You expect to take more money from your clients than you pay to them, do you not?
Insurance Agent: Certainly; if we did not
House Owner: I would not trust you with my money unless you did reference to the whole body of your clients, that they lose money on you it is probable , with reference to any one of them, that he will. It is these individual probabilities that make the aggregate certainty.
Insurance Agent: I will not deny it but look at the figures in this pamph
House Owner: Heaven forbid! Insurance Agent: You spoke of saving the premiums which you would otherwise pay to me. Will you not be more likely to squander them? We offer you an incentive to thrift.
House Owner: The willingness of A to take care of B's money is not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you command esteem. Deign to accept its expression from a Deserving Object.
INSURRECTION, n. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.
INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
INTERREGNUM, n. The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to keep it warm.
INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.
INTRODUCTION, n. A social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The introduction attains in this country its most malevolent development, being, indeed, closely related to our political system. Every American being the equal of every other American, it follows that everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the right to introduce without request or permission. The Declaration of Independence should have read thus:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created nice and equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the liberty to introduce persons to one another without first ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of strangers."
INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs, and believes it civilization.
IRRELIGION, n. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
ITCH, n. The patriotism of a Scotchman.
J
jacereJEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can only be lost if not worth keeping.
JESTER, n. An officer formerly attached to a king's household, whose business it was to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and utterances, the absurdity being attested by his motley costume. The king himself being attired with dignity, it took the world some centuries to discover that his own conduct and decrees were sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind. The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise and witty person. In the circus clown of to-day the melancholy ghost of the court fool effects the dejection of humbler audiences with the same jests wherewith in life he gloomed the marble hall, panged the patrician sense of humor and tapped the tank of royal tears.