"No, it doesn't. And yet the daily report is as vital a document as there is in the world."
"In what way? I never heard of it before."
"You never asked Mr. Osgood. He has sent us many thousand. As you know, the company receives its business from agents, scattered all through the country, at most of the important and a large number of unimportant points. In New England alone this company has nearly two hundred agents, each one writing policies when people apply for insurance."
"Does Uncle Silas write policies? I thought the companies themselves did that."
"No. Mr. Osgood has a young man in his office—his name is Reed—who does nothing else. And every time a policy is written by Mr. Reed and signed by Mr. Osgood or Mr. Cole and delivered to the assured, this peculiar document, the daily report, is made up and sent in to this office. It is really a complete description of the policy which has just been written."
"But there must be thousands!"
"Of course. One for every policy every agent issues. We get more than two hundred a day in this office."
"That's why Uncle Silas said I ought to go to a home office to see things properly. That's what he meant—it's the center of everything. I begin to understand."
Smith, glancing at her, perceived that there was no question of her interest now.
"Here they come, the daily reports," he continued, "and we open them—dailies from Chicago, San Antonio, Butte, Lenox, Jersey City, Tampa, Bangor. Dailies in English, a few in Spanish, quite a number in French, for a few of our Canadian agents speak nothing else. This current of dailies flowing through this office, never ceasing day in and day out, year after year, is like the current of the blood tending back to the heart, like the response of the nerves to the pulse-beat, reporting at the brain, bringing news of the body's health, even down to the fingers' ends. And we sit here, like a spider in a web, drawing all the world."