), it is
remarkable how uniformly the same numbers occur under each head from
year to year. General laws obtain as much in small as in great
events. We are informed by the Post-Office authorities that about
eight persons daily drop their letters into the post without directing
them??“we know that there is an unvarying percentage of
broken heads and limbs received into the hospitals??“and here
we see that a regular number of houses take fire, year by year, from
the leaping out of a spark, or the dropping of a smouldering pipe of
tobacco. It may indeed be a long time before another conflagration
will arise from "a monkey upsetting a clotheshorse," but we have no
doubt such an accident will recur in its appointed cycle.
Although gas figures so largely as a cause of fire, it does not appear
that its rapid introduction of late years into private houses has been
attended with danger. There is another kind of light, however, which
the insurance offices look upon with terror, especially those who make
it their business to insure farm property.
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