There was a legion of people we wanted to help--a great many of them when we first began, and I told Lucy to get a quire of paper and make a catalogue, but somehow or other they got fewer as we thought about it, until she numbered every one upon her fingers that seemed to have much hold upon our affections. Those I pensioned off in the most liberal manner, and had quite a warm and genial feeling about my heart, as if I had really been beneficent and _done_ something, when I had only been benevolent and _wished_ something. We had two or three wealthy neighbors who had gathered richness as damp logs gather moss, and that was about all there was of it--aggregating golden egg after golden egg, flattening themselves out like an incubating goose ambitious to cover the whole nest, and calling the proceeding "enterprise." I would set these mossy fellows an example that should rebuke them to the tips of their ears. And so I gave twenty thousand dollars for a public library to be free to all residents of the town forever. We had made Christmas "merry" and New Year "happy" for many a heart that would else have had neither one nor the other.
I am glad now to be able to state that there was only one man whom I had the least desire to humble when I became an hundred thousand strong, and he was an insurance agent--a retired doctor, who, growing weary of saving lives with pills, had taken to insuring lives with policies. He was always tormenting me "to insure." He looked me over like an undertaker with a measure in his eye. He kept me constantly reminded of the fact of death, as if it were inevitable. I hardly ever saw him that I did not fancy him rushing around to my widow the next day after I had won the wager, paying her the amount of insurance, and thence away to the printing office with a card flickering in his hand, inscribed with words and figures following, to-wit:
I thank you for the prompt payment of the sum of $10,000, for which amount you had insured my late husband's life.
Late husband indeed! The pulses of a pound of cold putty are lively compared with my circulation at the idea of that sort of "late"--too late ever to be again "on time." Well, all I want of that doctor is that he shall solicit me once more, when I will say, "Insure? Do I look like a man who needs help for his perishing family? Examine my will--Lucy, $50,000! 'Port,' $20,000! Accept an invitation to my Free Library. Be silent and be happy. Good morning," and with this nightcap for his importunity, I would pass graciously on like a great harvest-moon when it gives the last touch to the ripening regiments of corn.