he old policies represent an actual liability;
the company which has issued them is obliged to hold a certain sum
against each of them. The aggregate of these sums makes up the
"reserve" or reinsurance fund. As fast as the old policies are
cancelled this reserve is released, and when all the policies are
cancelled there is no liability at all. The new policies of course have
no liability. This is in short the whole operation of wrecking. By such
means a million or two of assets will be distributed, and in the
process the policy-holders will receive a little--a very little--and
the agents a good deal, and the officers composing the ring all that is
left. The arts, the deceptions, the false representations made in the
course of the proceeding to induce the policy-holder to give up his
policy have been fully disclosed by the evidence in question. Of course
it is suggested that the company is in a bad way, and that there is
probably no other way of securing anything unless an opportunity now
offered of changing is embraced.

Reinsurance was abandoned as a means of wrecking because it was found
the policy-holders preferred to keep the old policy and the new
guarantee together. So in the later transactions they are told that if
they do not change, they will get nothing.

The lesson of all this to the policy-holder may be written in large
letters and kept as a maxim:

DO NOT SURRENDER YOUR POLICY.

You will never make a mistake by keeping to this motto. And
particularly the more should it be kept to when you are urged by agents
to a contrary action. You never get one-third its value even in
companies honestly managed; what you get in companies dishonestly
managed no one can tell.

FALLEN AMONG THIEVES.

BRUSSELS!

Is it not written that good Americans, when they die, go to Paris? So
Elysium to all righteous sons of Cockayne is Brussels. And yet I was
weary of it. No charms for me had the perpetual sabots and blouses, the
_braves Belges_ in jaunty uniform, the bejewelled saunterers in the
Galerie St. Hubert, the _gauche_ tourists desecrating the sombre
stillness of the St. Gudule, _la belle Anglaise_ seeing for the first
time the outrageous little manikin, the homely phaeton of good old King
Leopold with its pair of very unroyal plugs, the tirailleurs in Lincoln
green, the Parc with its music, fountains and maitrank, the Jardin des
Plantes, the boulevard, and the Ecole d'Equitation.

All lost on me. I sto