s probably occurred to you that the Massachusetts Light,
Heat, and Traction Company can do the same thing--and does. I use the
interest and profits of my insurance fund which I have accumulated by
not paying premiums, to pay losses. How about that?"

"That would be all right if your properties were widely enough
distributed. But they're not. Some day you'll get a big loss, which
will wipe out your interest, profits, and fund all together for twenty
years. Your fund's all right for cars that burn on the road or for
small fires; but what if something big went? And the insurance money
would come in very nicely when you most needed it. You'd have trouble
enough on your hands without having to go out and raise money, too, if
your new Pemberton Street barn should burn up with half a million
dollars' worth of cars in it--which it is quite possible it may do at
almost any time."

"What! The new barn?" said the magnate, incredulously. "Why, my boy,
that barn is the latest thing in fireproof construction! There isn't a
stick of wood in that building from cellar to attic."

"And the cars, are they fireproof, too?"

John M. Hurd looked up sharply.

"No," he said slowly. "No, I don't suppose they are. . . . Still,
there's nothing to set the cars afire. They're safe enough in that
building. Nothing can happen to them there."

"The building itself is not located on a desert island in the middle of
the Atlantic Ocean," said his nephew, thoughtfully. "It _might_ be
exposed to a serious fire in some of the neighboring buildings--that
big paper-box factory, for example, across the alley to the south.
There _might_, in fact,"--he paused--"there _might_ be a general fire
in that part of Boston."

"A conflagration, you mean? Nonsense! Boston is safe as a church."

"Probably safer than St. Stephen's, out in Cambridge, that burned to
the ground last week," returned his visitor, with a smile.

"To be sure," said Mr. Hurd, hastily. "But there'll never be a big,
sweeping fire in Boston."

"Why not? There was one once."

"Forty years ago. That's no criterion. Things are very different now.
This is a modern city we're talking about--half the buildings down town
are fireproof or nearly so. Modern cities don't burn the way older
ones did."

"Baltimore did, as you may recall; also San Francisco. And they were
modern--as modern as Boston. There _are_ people--not Bostonians, of
course--who would consider them more