“Just that.”
“Would it not have been wiser—”
“I know what you would say,” interrupted Lincoln. “Yes, it would have been wiser. The possession of a policy for five thousand dollars would give me a far greater pleasure than I have yet derived from looking at or sitting upon my new chairs and sofa. The old ones were comfortable enough.”
“Don’t put it off any longer. Better take out a policy for two thousand five hundred now, if the amount of premium is an object, and another policy for a like sum in two or three months.”
“I’ll do that,” said he, speaking earnestly.
We parted. A month or two afterward, I alluded to the matter again. The insurance had not been made, and Lincoln seemed a little annoyed at my reference to the subject. After that I avoided any further remark touching the advantages of life insurance when in company with Lincoln. But I never met his wife, a fragile looking creature, that I did not feel an emotion of pain at the thought of her being left destitute, with six children clinging to her for support.
Nearly a year elapsed from the time of my last reference to the subject of life insurance, when news came to the city that, while bathing on the sea-shore, Lincoln had been drowned. The sad event was made sadder in my mind, as my thoughts turned, involuntarily, to his wife and children, left without a protector and provider. What were they to do? Lincoln had been engaged in the business of a real estate broker. At his death, there was no estate to settle up—no store to sell out—few if any debts to collect. The office would be closed, and the income cease.
“Poor woman! what is she to do?” said I to myself a dozen times in the first hour that elapsed after I had heard the afflictive news. “Without fifty dollars in the world, probably, besides furniture and clothing, how is she to maintain, by her own unaided exertions, a family of six children?”
So much was I afflicted by the occurrence, that I could not sleep for some hours after retiring to bed in the evening.
On the next morning the newspapers contained a notice of the accident, with this announcement: