18th Jan. tidings that it was in contemplation to start a new institution.to be called "The Social Demands Insurance Company." The man who has, or is supposed to have, any money to spare, or even only enough to live on, is constantly being plagued to give something to somebody. In our own immediate circle, of course, we are always giving, for birthdays and Christmasses and New Years and similar anniversaries come round with the certainty of Death and the tax-collector; but in that circle we must be very unfortunate if we are not sometimes given to; and sometimes we give and are given things of more than ephemeral value. 'I'he smoker can find a use even for superfluous. saltcellars. Bat it is by the outside offspring of the house-leech that our lives are made a burden; they add rapacity to the persistency of the blue-fly buzzing on the pane. "There seems to be a race of busybodies, for example," we are told, "who exist for the purpose of getting up testimonials, and monuments, and memorials.- 'They appear to consult the almanac' daily and ask themselves Whom can we tease the public into commemorating? Almost every day is the birthday, or the centenary, or the tercentenary of somebody. A hundred years have passed since Prodgers was born, or died, or published his immortal work. ' Let us do something,' cries the busybody, for the illustrious memory of Prodgers. He than consults the "Biographical Dictionary' and finds that Prodgers was born at Little Pedlington, or died there, or was at school there. "So he determines to make Little Pedlington a kind of Stratford-on-Avon; he takes into his counsels seven other busybodies worse than himself, he makes a committee, he writes to the papers, he sends letters to all the conspicuous people whom he can think of, he asks for their names, and, worst of all, for their money. These things cannot be done without money, and Little Pedlington (which never heard of Prodgers befure) is enthusiastic, but does not subscribe. A Prodgers drinking fountain is proposed by the temperance people; the local bookseller is all for a Prodgers library (as if any one in Little Pedlington ever read a book!); a Prodgers museum, containing Prodgers relics, the walking stick of Prodgers, his old boots, his quill pens, letters to Prodgers, and similar objects, is 'a felt want.' Every man of letters is asked to subscribe. There is a Prodgers fete—many distinguished expressions of regret are received, the local clergy perorate, and all those splendour have to be paid for. Then the problem arises, How little can I give for Prodgers and his glory without seeming shabby Demands similar to these are endless. It is somebody's silver wedding or golden wedding, or he is resigning a well-paid post which he has filled blamelessly for many years, or he is being appointed to a higher post where he will have still less to do and more to receive, and some offensive person proposes that he should have a testimonial. We remember when we were at a public school in London a craze sprang up for presenting our masters with testimonials, and after we had worried our fathers into giving us. shillings and half-crowns, every master was astonished one moraing to find a deputation of the most troublesome boys in his class waiting on him witha gold pencil-case, though he had long ceased to be able to write intelligibly, or a perfectly unreadable book, copiously and execrably illustrated and gaudily bound. In later life we have to subscribe that the object of some enthusiast's solicitude "may smirk in marble or frown in oils." Yet no-one in the world, except the artist employed, is benefitted by the object's features being perpetuated in marble or on canvas. Then there is the constant tax of wedding presents. Society - papers tell us ever and anon, when they cannot think for the moment of any other presentable falsehood, that marrying is out of fashion; so it may be, but only, as the friends who have to give the wedding presents and those who make and sell them know, " when the gorse is out of bloom."
"To meet all these difficulties," the Times -continues, "and to lighten the needless burdens of life, the Social Demands Insurance Company has been formed. The society, on receipt of a subscription, graduated according to the income and needs of the members, will transact for them the whole business, on the cheapest possible scale. he society is not afraid of being called shabby; it has no corporate delicacy of feeling. Doing a large ready-money business, the society enjoys exceptional facilities for the purchase of silver muffineers at a considerable discount, and is thus prepared greatly to reduce the annual expenditure on wed-iding presents. It has established a {fixed ratio of contributions to testimonials of all descriptions. A large bankrupt stock of epergnes and de-curative clocks has been secured, and silver weddings can now be arranged for on satisfactory, yet economical, terms. In the matter of portraits, the society has engaged a staff of Impressionists and sculptors' ghosts, who will work ut low rates, yet produce articles which, the society flatters itself, are. calculated to give artistic satisfaction. Moreover, a collection of painters' misfits has been secured, on very reasonable terms. 'I'hese are portraits rejected by the vanity of the sitters, and it has been estimated that they can be converted into tolerable likenesses of almost any professors, actors, schoolmasters, generals, musicians, landlords, or masters of hounds, at an almost nominal expenditure. Thus commanding the market, and utilising artistic refuse (that great principle of modern economy), the society is prepared to conciliate the most apparently antagonistic interests, and is equally ready to treat with the organisers of testimonials and with the unfortunate persons who are at present compelled to defray the expenses."
We ure sure that it will at once strike all our readers that it would be an admirable thing to have a branch of this Society established here. We. do not have indeed very many testimonials or memorials to subscribe to, because most of our great men go home, and pass out of our life, before even their most obsequious admirers could allege that the time lias come for perpetuating their memory. A still greater safeguard is that we have here neither portrait painters ner sculptors. But for all hat the subscription list is always circulating with the inevitability of the tides, An insurance company undertaking the satisfaction of all these claims and the wedding-present tax, with a tariff of subscriptions proportioned to the income and extent of acquaintanceship of its insured, would be hailed with delight. Those who are Masons or Scotchmen have already organisations to which some of these claims can be referred; but many of us do not desire to be made Masons, and Scotchmen, like poets, are born, not made. The share business, we learn, is so bad that the brokers who used to go in_ victorias have to go in jinriesbas, and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.