New York, when he had the bad luck to step on the tail of a dog and was
bitten in retaliation. Frenzied by the pain of the wound, he gave the
creature a savage kick and it ran howling toward a group of idlers in
front of a grocery store. In ancient America the dog was a sacred animal,
worshiped by all sorts and conditions of tribesmen. The idlers at once
raised a great cry, and setting upon the offender beat him so that he
died.

Their act was infectious: men, women and children trooped out of their
dwellings by thousands to join them, brandishing whatever weapons they
could snatch, and uttering wild cries of vengeance. This formidable mob
overpowered the police, and marching from one insurance office to another,
successively demolished them all, slew such officers as they could lay
hands on, and chased the fugitive survivors into the sea, "where," says a
quaint chronicle of the time, "they were eaten by their kindred, the
sharks." This carnival of violence continued all the day, and at set of
sun not one person connected with any form of insurance remained alive.

Ferocious and bloody as was the massacre, it was only the beginning. As
the news of it went blazing and coruscating along the wires by which
intelligence was then conveyed across the country, city after city caught
the contagion. Everywhere, even in the small hamlets and the agricultural
districts, the dupes rose against their dupers. The smoldering resentment
of years burst into flame, and within a week all that was left of
insurance in America was the record of a monstrous and cruel delusion
written in the blood of its promoters.

A remarkable feature of the crude and primitive civilization of the
Americans was their religion. This was polytheistic, as is that of all
backward peoples, and among their minor deities were their own women. This