"The popular belief is that book agents are shot on sight and their mangled bodies thrown into the tall grass or fed to the coyotes.
"I found, however, that I could get my life insured for two thousand dollars by paying a premium of twelve dollars per year, as a book agent. This was far better than anything I had ever looked for. The question arose as to whether I worked in my garden or not, and I was forced to admit that I did. It ought to reduce the premium if a man works in his garden, and thus, by short periods of vigorous exercise, prolongs his life, but it don't seem to be that way. They charged me an additional three dollars on the premium, because I toiled a little among my pet rutabagas.
"I don't know what the theory is about this matter. Perhaps the company labors under the impression that a thousand-legged worm might crawl into my ear and kill me, or a purple-top turnip might explode and knock my brains out.
"Of course, in the midst of life we are in death, but I always used to think I was safer mashing my squash-bugs and hoeing my blue-eyed beans than when I was on the road, dodging bulldogs and selling books.
"Perhaps some amateur gardener, in a careless moment, at some time or other, has been stabbed in the diaphragm by a murderous radish, or a watermelon may have stolen up to some man, in years gone by, and brained him with part of a picket fence. There must be statistics somewhere by which the insurance companies have arrived at this high rate on gardeners. If you know anything of this matter, I wish you would write me, for if hoeing sweet corn and cultivating string beans is going to sock me into an early grave I want to know it."