proposition--then I don't know anything about--_anything_! So if I
should croak sudden any time in a railroad accident or a hotel fire or
a scrap in a saloon, I ain't calculating on leaving my wife any very
large amount of 'sore thoughts.' When a man wants his memory kept
green, he don't mean--gangrene!

"Oh, of course," the Salesman continued more cheerfully, "a sudden
croaking leaves any fellow's affairs at pretty raw ends--lots of
queer, bitter-tasting things that would probably have been all right
enough if they'd only had time to get ripe. Lots of things, I haven't
a doubt, that would make my wife kind of mad, but nothing, I'm
calculating, that she wouldn't understand. There'd be no questions
coming in from the office, I mean, and no fresh talk from the road
that she ain't got the information on hand to meet. Life insurance
ain't by any means, in my mind, the only kind of protection that a
man owes his widow. Provide for her Future--if you can!--That's my
motto!--But a man's just a plain bum who don't provide for his own
Past! She may have plenty of trouble in the years to come settling her
own bills, but she ain't going to have any worry settling any of mine.
I tell you, there'll be no ladies swelling round in crape at my
funeral that my wife don't know by their first names!"

With a sudden startling guffaw the Traveling Salesman's mirth rang
joyously out above the roar of the car.

"Tell me about your wife," said the Youngish Girl a little wistfully.

Around the Traveling Salesman's generous mouth the loud laugh
flickered down to a schoolboy's bashful grin.