AND NEVER AN ACCIDENT.
For a good while I said to myself every morning: "Now I
have escaped thus far, and so the chances are just that much
increased that I shall catch it this time. I will be shrewd,
and buy an accident ticket." And to a dead moral certainty I
drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started
or a bone splintered. I got tired of that sort of daily bother,
and fell to buying accident tickets that were good for a month.
I said to myself, "A man CAN'T buy thirty blanks in one bundle."
But I was mistaken. There was never a prize in the the lot.
I could read of railway accidents every day--the newspaper
atmosphere was foggy with them; but somehow they never came my way.
I found I had spent a good deal of money in the accident business,
and had nothing to show for it. My suspicions were aroused, and I
began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery.
I found plenty of people who had invested, but not an individual
that had ever had an accident or made a cent. I stopped buying
accident tickets and went to ciphering. The result was astounding.
THE PERIL LAY NOT IN TRAVELING, BUT IN STAYING AT HOME.
I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all
the glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters,
less than THREE HUNDRED people had really lost their lives by those
disasters in the preceding twelve months.
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