THE DEVOTED AGENT.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 30, 10 November 1871, Page 3

THE DEVOTED AGENT.

THE FATE OF BENJAMIN P. GUNN. His name was Benjamin P. Gunn, and he was the agent for an insurance company. He came round to my office fourteen times in one morning to see if he could not pursuade me to take out a life insurance policy in his company. He used to waylay me on the street, at church, in my own house, and bore me about that policy. If I went to the opera, Gunn would buy the seat next to me, and sit the whole evening talking about sudden death and the advantage of the ten-year plan. If I got into a street car, Gunn would come rushing in at the next corner, and sit by my side and drag out a lot of mortality tables, and begin to explain how I could beat his company out of a. fortune. If I sat down to dinner in a restaurant, up would come Gunn, and seizing the chair next to me, he would tell a cheering anecdote of a man who insured in his company for 50,000 dols. only last week, and was buried yesterday. If I attended the funeral of a departed friend, and wept as they threw the earth upon his coffin, I would hear a whisper, and turning around, there would be the indomitable Benjamin P. Gunn, bursting to say “ Poor Smith. Knew him well. Insured for ten thousand in our Company. Widow left in comfortable circumstances. Lot me take your name. Shall 1 ?" He followed me everywhere; until at last I got so sick of Gunn’s persecutions that I left towu suddenly one evening, and hid myself in a secluded country village, hoping to get rid of him. At the end of two weeks I returned, reaching home at one in the morning. I had hardly got into bed before there was a ring at the door bell. I looked out and there was Gunn, with another person! He asked if Max Aldeler was at home. I

said I was the man. Mr Gunn then observed that ho expected my return,-and thought he would call round about that insurance policy. He said he had the doctor with him, and if I would come down he would take my naino and have me examined immediately. I was too indignant to reply. I shut the . window with a slam and went to bed again. After breakfast in the morning I opened the front door, and there was Gunn sitting on the steps with his doctor waiting for me! He had been there all night. As I came out they seized mo and tried to undress mo there on the pavement in order to examine me, I retreated and locked myself up in the garret with orders to admit nobody to the house until I cams down stairs. But Gunn would not be baffled. He actually rented the houso next door, and stationed himself in the garret adjoining mine. When he got fixed he spent his time pounding on the partition and crying ‘ Hallo, Aldelcr ! Aldelcr, I say! How about that policy ? Want to take her out now ?’ And then he would tell me some anecdotes about men who were killed immediately after paying the first premium. But I paid no attention to him, and made no noise. Then he was silent for a time. Suddenly, one morning, the trap-door of my garret was wrenched off ; and upon looking up I saw Gunn, with the doctor and a crowbar, and lot of death-rates coming down the ladder at me. I fled from the house to the Presbyterian church close by, and paid the sexton twenty dollars to let me climb up to the point ol the steeple for a week. Once safely on the ball, three hundred feet from the earth, I made myself comfortable with the thought that I had Gunn at a disadvantage, and I determided to beat him finally if I had to stay there tor a month. About an hour afterwards, while I was looking at the superb view to the west, I heard a rustling on the other side of the steeple. I looked around, and there was Benjamin P. Gunn creeping up the side of that spire in a balloon in which was the doctor and the tabular estimates of the losses of his Company from the Tontine system. As soon as Gunn reached the ball, lie threw his grappling irons into the shingles of the steeple, and asked me at what age my father died, and if any of my aunts ever had consumption or liver complaint. Without waiting to reply, I slid down the steeple to the ground, and took the first train to the Mississippi Valley. In two weeks I was in Mexico. I determined to go to the interior, and seek some wild spot, in some elevated region, where no Gunn would ever dare to come. I got on a mule and paid a guide to lead me to the summit of the Propocatapel. We arrived at the foot of the mountain at noon. We toiled upwards for about four hours. Just before reaching the top I heard the sound of voices, and on rounding a point of rock, who should I see but Benjamin P. Gunn seated on the very edge of the crater, explaining the endowment plan to his guide, and stupefying him with the mortality table, while the doctor had the other guide a few yards off examining him to see if he was healthy ! ‘ Mr Gunn arose and said he was glad to see me, because now we could talk over that business about the policy without fear of interruption. In a paroxysm of rage I pushed him backwards into the crater ; and he fell a thousand feet below with a heavy thud. As he struck the bottom I heard a voice screaming out something about “ nonforfeiture ;” but there was a sudden convulsion of the mountain, a cloud of smoke, and I heard no more. I know it was wrong. I know I had no right to kill Gunn in that m. nner : but he forced me to do it in self-defence, and I hope his awful fate will be a warning to other insurance agents who remain among us. —lnsurance Monitor of New York.