INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player
is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating
the man who keeps the table.
INSURANCE AGENT: My dear sir, that is a fine house--pray let me
insure it.
HOUSE OWNER: With pleasure. Please make the annual premium so
low that by the time when, according to the tables of your
actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have
paid you considerably less than the face of the policy.
INSURANCE AGENT: O dear, no--we could not afford to do that.
We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.
HOUSE OWNER: How, then, can _I_ afford _that_?
INSURANCE AGENT: Why, your house may burn down at any time.
There was Smith's house, for example, which--
HOUSE OWNER: Spare me--there were Brown's house, on the
contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which--
INSURANCE AGENT: Spare _me_!
HOUSE OWNER: Let us understand each other. You want me to pay
you money on the supposition that something will occur
previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence. In
other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last
so long as you say that it will probably last.
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, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are
based. If I could not afford that, how could you if it were
insured?
INSURANCE AGENT: O, we should make ourselves whole 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. Very well
then. If it is _certain_, with 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 make it warm
again.
INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for
their mutual destruction.
Two Seidlitz powders, one in blue
And one in white, together drew
And having each a pleasant sense
Of t'other powder's excellence,
Forsook their jackets for the snug
Enjoyment of a common mug.
So close their intimacy grew
One paper would have held the two.
To confidences straight they fell,
Less anxious each to hear than tell;
Then each remorsefully confessed
To all the virtues he possessed,
Acknowledging he had them in
So high degree it was a sin.
The more they said, the more they felt
Their spirits with emotion melt,
Till tears of sentiment expressed
Their feelings. Then they effervesced!
So Nature executes her feats
Of wrath on friends and sympathetes
The good old rule who won't apply,
That you are you and I am I.
INTRODUCTION, n. A social ceremony invented by the devil for the
gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The
introduction attains its most malevolent development in this country,
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 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
J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel--
than which nothing could be more absurd. Its original form, which has
been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and
it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb,
_jacere_, "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the
dog's tail assumes that shape. This is the origin of the letter, as
expounded by the renowned Dr. Jocolpus Bumer, of the University of
Belgrade, who established his conclusions on the subject in a work of
three quarto volumes and committed suicide on being reminded that the
j in the Roman alphabet had originally no curl.
JEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which
can be lost only 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 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.
The widow-queen of Portugal
Had an audacious jester
Who entered the confessional
Disguised, and there confessed her.
"Father," she said, "thine ear bend down--
My sins are more than scarlet:
I love my fool--blaspheming clown,
And common, base-born varlet."
"Daughter," the mimic priest replied,
"That sin, indeed, is awful:
The church's pardon is denied
To love that is unlawful.
"But since thy stubborn heart will be
For him forever pleading,
Thou'dst better make him, by decree,
A man of birth and breeding."
She made the fool a duke, in hope
With Heaven's taboo to palter;
Then told a priest, who told the Pope,
Who damned her from the altar!