Often, indeed, a man does insure his life, and then in some year of panic or depression is forced to sell the policy or go under.  Or he insures in firms that fail.  My father insured in three companies and all failed before he died.  In San Francisco the “earthquake clause” prevented many men from recovering a penny on their merchandise or investments swept away by the fire.  Even a large number of the rich were embarrassed by that fire, for, having invested millions in Class A buildings, which were fire-proof, they saw no necessity for expending huge sums annually in premiums.  They never thought of a general conflagration whose momentum would carry the flames across the street and into their buildings through the windows, eating up the interiors and leaving the fire-proof shell.  One family lost six million dollars in a few hours, and emigrated to one of the Swiss lakes in order to be able to educate their children while their fortunes slowly recovered with the aid of borrowed capital.

A large number of girls, who, without being rich, had led the sheltered life before the fire, were obliged to go to work at once.  Some were clever enough to know what they could do and did it without loss of time, some were assisted, others blundered along and nearly starved.

Often men who have done well and even brilliantly up to middle life, are not equal to the tremendous demand upon the vital energies of beginning life over again after some disastrous visitation of Nature, or a panic, or an ill-advised personal venture has wrecked their own business or that of the concern in which they were a highly paid cog.  In the mining States men are dependent upon the world’s demand for their principal product.  Farmers and stock-raisers are often cruelly visited, strikes or hard times paralyze mills and factories; and in times of panic and dry-rot the dealers in luxuries, including booksellers—­to say nothing of the writers of books as well as the devotees of all the arts—­are the first to suffer.  And it is their women that suffer acutely, because although many of these men may hang on and recover, many more do not.  They have used up their vital forces.  It is not so much a matter of will as of physics.  A woman in the same conditions who had been obliged to tax her vital organs for an equal number of years would no doubt have lasted as long.

Unless defective, there is not a girl alive, certainly not an American girl, who is wholly lacking in some sort of ability.  The parasite type (who is growing rare in these days, by the way, for it is now the fashion to “do things”) either fastens herself upon complacent relatives or friends when deserted by fortune, or drifts naturally into the half-world, always abundantly recruited from such as she.