sidered, as far as he is concerned, an acci dent. The circumstances under review were the killing of a man by an officer, who had been ordered to arrest him. The man came to a door, said nothing, did not throw up his hands when commanded. The officer fired, then entered the room in which the man had been whiling away the time with several com panions with the pasteboards as men will do. There was conflicting evidence on the point whether the officer knew the man he shot. He contended he did, but another witness said that the officer after entering room pointed his pistol at a third man saying, " You are B. U.," to be told " No, you've killed your man." The court held the case was for the jury to decide whether the officer knew the man he killed at the time he fired the pistol shot, that if he did not know the man he fired at was B. U. though he was the one man to be arrested, he did not intend to kill him, hence it could not be said that the insured lost his life by the design of the officer. When your accident policy provides that it does not insure from intentionally inflicted injuries and no words are inserted indicating a third person, an injury intentionally in flicted by another is not included. In such cases the courts will hold that the word inten tionally refers to the insured alone. When in this shape your policy contains the murder clause and you may permit yourself to be murdered with impunity. When anything happens to you and you carry an accident policy you can rest assured that the law will be on your side unless you leave unquestioned proof that you shuf fled off your own coil. A man about to be injured is not expected to gather together his witnesses to see the act done so that he may clearly prove it afterwards to the insur ance company. Courts have refused to give countenance to conditions in policies requir ing proof of exact manner of the occurrence of the injury. So should you be sent home, as a certain railroad conductor was, a mass
of bruises, but without the proof of the man ner in which they were inflicted and you depart into some other bourne before you have had the chance to explain, your bene ficiary will not be compelled to explain un known circumstances. Proof of bruises or wounds causing death will be held to make out a prima facie case of death from bodily injuries through accidental means, the pre sumption that they were accidental being on your side. Further the legal presumption is that you did not intend to do yourself any harm — to suicide — and that no one else intended to injure you but that the injuries were accidental. Again the court will say that your policy is to be liberally construed in favor of the insured, yourself. The in sured has paid his money, the insurer has taken the money, and if there is any legal way to compel the insurer to give that which has been paid for, it will be done. But what is an accident so that you may know it when you make its acquaintance? Or what has been adjudged to be an acci dent so that you may know what the thrilling experience is in the terms of your accident policy? The majority of mortals believe that to die is the greatest accident, but dy ing is just as natural an everyday occurrence as living. True, it often takes place through disease and infirmities that flesh is heir to, and might be said to be without any human agency. It is a very unusual, unforeseen accident, as it were, as far as you are con cerned, the only experience of your life you do not live through. Once is enough for you, for you are no cat with nine lives. You may look upon it as a supreme accident whenever it occurs, but as it is given to all men to die once, legally the fact of death is no accident. It is the manner in which you die that determines whether it be accidental. There is a unique case upon newspaper authority. One traveling in Kentucky was bitten so severely by a native, to the manor born, mosquito that he died. It seemed to the beneficiary under his policy that this was
