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THE ASSURANCE OFFICE.

" I'll make assurance doubly sure,And take a bond of fate."— Shakspeare.

To persons ignorant of commercial and financialmysteries, the notion of insuring life seems astrange one. How a house or a ship may be in-sured is easily comprehended; for the first mayprobably never be burnt, nor the second wrecked.But man must, at some time or other, die; andyet, against death, not only the young and vigo-rous, but the aged and valetudinary, find no diffi-culty in obtaining, on various conditions, what istechnically called a policy of insurance. Is itnot rather a sentence of execution, the term ofwhich is not precisely defined 1

Slanderers of human nature deny that there issuch a thing as friendship. Even the less misan-thropic consider themselves remarkably fortunate