compromise, but of this there is no record. It is certain that in the San
Francisco case the precedent was urged.

Another precedent which the companies cited with particular emphasis
related to an unfortunate occurrence at a famous millionaires' club in
London, the capital of the renowned king, John Bui. A gentleman passing in
the street fell in a fit and was carried into the club in convulsions. Two
members promptly made a bet upon his life. A physician who chanced to be
present set to work upon the patient, when one of the members who had laid
the wager came forward and restrained him, saying: "Sir, I beg that you
will attend to your own business. I have my money on that fit."

Doubtless these two notable precedents did not constitute the entire case
of the defendants in the San Francisco insurance litigation, but the
additional pleas are lost to us.

Of the many forms of gambling known as insurance that called life
insurance appears to have been the most vicious. In essence it was the
same as fire insurance, marine insurance, accident insurance and so forth,
with an added offensiveness in that it was a betting on human
lives--commonly by the policy-holder on lives that should have been held
most sacred and altogether immune from the taint of traffic. In point of
practical operation this ghastly business was characterized by a more
fierce and flagrant dishonesty than any of its kindred pursuits. To such
lengths of robbery did the managers go that at last the patience of the
public was exhausted and a comparatively trivial occurrence fired the
combustible elements of popular indignation to a white heat in which the
entire insurance business of the country was burned out of existence,
together with all the gamblers who had invented and conducted it. The
president of one of the companies was walking one morning in a street of