HOW ABOUT RIFLEMEN’S LIFE ASSURANCES?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 4, Issue 195, 14 June 1860, Page 4

HOW ABOUT RIFLEMEN’S LIFE ASSURANCES?

[From Punch."] “Dear Mb. Punch— -I have the good fortune to be married to one of the handsomest, and lam sure and certain, one of the bravest of men ; and how nobly my -Ebenezer would ~ look in the costume of the Edgeware Road Rifles you can hardly imagine. A fond and - devoted wife (which I may say that I am) would rejoice to behold the husband of her heart in the uniform of the Queen.

“ But, Mr. Punch, my beloved Ebenezer shall not, if I know it (and he does very little, I can tell you, a dear fellow, that I do not know all about), join a Rifle Corps, try on a uniform, or even look into a gunmaker’s window, until I have my mind made comfortr able upon the following point :—When I consented to become his happy bride, my dear parents insisted upon my Ebenezer assuring his life, and he loved me too well to think of hesitating. He assured himself in either the Ineligible or Unamiable Assurance Office, I forget which. To the sum thus secured, I, and the five darling children at present comDOS jn ff ;ll 1 Alii- rtirolo, liauA fIIAOA-tA look, m the unfortunate event of dearest Ebenezer exchanging this mundane world for a celestial. “ Now, my dear Mr. Punch, I know that most of the Assurance Offices provide that they shall not have to pay anything if an assured life becomes extinct by duelling land very proper), or by shooting yourself, (and very proper too, only that the loss falls upon your family), or by your being hanged (which is not likely to happen to a respectable person), and I am told that in some offices they provide against paying if you fall by the hand of an invader.

“ Now, this is the point. If our Riflemen’s* Assurances are not made safe, whatever may happen to them in the discharge of their guna or their duty, no man who has a wife and! children, and loves them, is justifled in enlist* ing. If he cannot protect his own home by Assurance, he has no call to jbe protecting; other people’s homes by Valour. —jWy Ebenezer shall not join, until he has distinctlyagreed that if anything happens to him in* reviews, or in exercises, or in case the enemy comes, and Ebenezer rushes to glory (as I know he will) and meets a hero’s doom, themoney shall be paid by the Ineligible or the Unamiable, or whatever it is. Not that I should long survive him, of course, but I choose tb have the money. “ I should think that the Assurance Society would not be such Idiots as to refuse to make this agreement with all the Riflemen, for if the country were left undefended, what would become of the Assurance Offices ? Why my dear Mr Punch, the French would turn them all into cafes, and very nice cafes they would make, with their large tables aud plate-glass doors.—However that is their business. If I wergt . the.. offices... lflt.jheRifles know what my intentions were J and it I were you Mr. Punch, I would publish a list, of the Offices to which a brave Rifleman may safely go, and provide for his innocent family before encountering his ferocious enemy. No man will take such a steady aim at a wicked Frenchman as the man who knows that all is right at home. ‘ Lay the proud invaders low,. Tyrants fall in ev’ry foe, But before to fight you go. Mind your policy.’ “Pray bring this question forward m your own way, and believe me, dear Mr. Punch, your devoted admirer, “ Cornelia Carnaby. “ Connaught Terrace.”