[Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link book
Sketches New and Old

CHAPTER VI
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Ingenious Smith!--gifted Smith!--noble Smith! Author of all our bliss! Hark! Do you know what that wheeze means?
Mary, that cub has got the whooping-cough.

Will you never learn to take care of the children!" THE END The Capitoline Venus is still in the Capitol at Rome, and is still the most charming and most illustrious work of ancient art the world can boast of.

But if ever it shall be your fortune to stand before it and go into the customary ecstasies over it, don't permit this true and secret history of its origin to mar your bliss--and when you read about a gigantic Petrified man being dug up near Syracuse, in the State of New York, or near any other place, keep your own counsel--and if the Barnum that buried him there offers to sell to you at an enormous sum, don't you buy.
Send him to the Pope! [NOTE .-- The above sketch was written at the time the famous swindle of the "Petrified Giant" was the sensation of the day in the United States] 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 Company 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 hereafter.

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


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