1.  Written in 1870.

THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED

The man in the ticket-office said: 

“Have an accident insurance ticket, also?”

“No,” I said, after studying the matter over a little.  “No, I believe not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today.  However, tomorrow I don’t travel.  Give me one for tomorrow.”

The man looked puzzled.  He said: 

“But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel by rail—­”

“If I am going to travel by rail I sha’n’t need it.  Lying at home in bed is the thing I am afraid of.”

I had been looking into this matter.  Last year I traveled twenty thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, I traveled over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail; and the year before that I traveled in the neighborhood of ten thousand miles, exclusively by rail.  I suppose if I put in all the little odd journeys here and there, I may say I have traveled sixty thousand miles during the three years I have mentioned.  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.  The Erie road was set down as the most murderous in the list.  It had killed forty-six —­or twenty-six, I do not exactly remember which, but I know the number was double that of any other road.  But the fact straightway suggested itself that the Erie was an immensely long road, and did more business than any other line in the country; so the double number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise.