The Life Insurance Cure

1900

Result of a Dying Bachelor's Plan For a Novel Funeral

"I don't know that life insurance is a cure for disease," said the retired life insurance solicitor, "but I know of an instance which makes it look that way. In the town where I first began business was a bachelor of about 50 years, who was quite alone in the world and had some years before taken out a $5,000 policy on himself for the benefit of a maiden sister, who had died a year before the events of this story. He kept his policy going, however, because it was a good way to save money, and one day he was taken down with some kind of fever. He grew worse day after day, until one day the doctor told him that he would in all likelihood be dead within the next 24 hours.

"This suggested his life insurance money, all he had to leave, and he immediately began to talk with the doctor on the subject of a proper disposal of it. He concluded after some thought that the best thing to do with it was to blow it on a tremendous big funeral for himself, including a banquet for all the people he knew. This was an entirely new idea for a funeral, and when the doctor left him that night to the care of his nurse his mind was entirely occupied with his funeral. He talked to the nurse about it, and when the nurse made him stop he lay and thought about it. In fact, he became so much interested in the details of his funeral that he quite forgot about having to die to make it possible.

"In the morning when the doctor came he found his patient in a wild perspiration and his pulse beating in much better fashion than it had been doing for some days. He also found the general condition of the patient much improved. He was greatly astonished and at once began to ask questions. The patient told him with eager interest of a lot of new things he had thought of for the funeral and some that bothered him a good deal and said he had been thinking of it all night. Then the doctor laughed and told him he guessed the funeral would have to be postponed, for he wasn't going to die just then anyhow. Nor did he, and he isn't dead yet, but he is married and has his policy paid up for his wife's benefit." - Chicago Inter Ocean.