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The Green Bag.

hour afterwards, death is caused by bodily injuries effected through external, violent and accidental means. Just what is external, violent and acci dental has been the source of a divergency of judicial opinion. One court being of the opinion that where there was no outward and visible signs of injury and violence by which insured accidentally came to his death, it was not through external, violent and acci dental means, and prevented recovery in the case of a beneficiary of a physician who drank by mistake water from a goblet in which was some poison. The more general judicial opinion, however, is that poison by mistake in a glass, or gas in atmosphere, is. an external cause and is a violent agency in the sense that it worked upon the insured as to cause death. That a death is the result of acci dent or is unnatural, imports an external and violent agency as the cause. Where policies are worded so as not to apply to the taking of poisons or inhaling of gas they do not mean exactly what they say. If you register at a hotel and wake up dead by reason of accidentally breathing an atmos phere full of illuminating gas, there will be a recovery, though your policy excepts death by inhaling gas. You may have been a back number and blew out the gas imagin ing that it was a tallow dip. It was an ac cidental not a conscious act. In order that insurer shall not be liable for a death by inhaling gas means a voluntary and intelli gent act by the insured and not an involun tary and unconscious act. Of course you inhaled the gas that put you so soundly to sleep but it was not an act of volition; if you had been consulted you would have pre ferred inhaling the odor of new mown hay. One court has well classified the various legal kinds of accidents. They are divided into two large divisions. First, those that befall a person without any human agency, as being killed by lightning or having a mad dog give you death by rabies, or being laid

low by a mosquito. Second, those that are the result of human agency. The latter class are subdivided into four kinds. First, that which happens by your own agency, as if in walking or running you accidentally fall and hurt yourself, or as when absent-mindedly dreaming in the gloaming you make the acquaintance of a door partly ajar. Second, that which happens by the agency of another without the concurrence of your will, as one on a scaffold unintention ally letting a brick fall from his hand to strike you below on the head. It may have been Patrick adjusting his pipe who let the brick loose out of his hod. Third, that which a person intentionally does whereby another is unintentionally injured, as firing a gun intentionally into the air and accidentally shooting you. The intentions are all right but the careless and thoughtless unintentions are all wrong. Fourth, intentional injury you receive which was not the result of rencounter or misconduct on your part but was unforeseen. The court of but one state in these last days of the century could have used that word " rencounter " so signifi cantly and naturally. Other courts would have chosen homely, ugly-sounding words to express the same idea. Can you locate it? It could only have come from the haunts of that Bourbon mosquito. Accident policies usually provide against injuries resulting from voluntary exposure or unnecessary danger. It is the business of the company to sell you a policy with as many conditions in it that can be put in and still have a marketable residuum. It ought to be your business to get your money's worth of chances, for it is doughnuts to dol lars that it will be your luck not to make the intimate acquaintance of an accident until the day after the expiration of your policy, hence while it is in force you want it as broad as it can be bought. You are traveling and your train stops on a bridge. All the male passengers as usual