The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 3 (August 1, 1931)

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Human culture has cultivated schemes for providing consolation prizes for those who hit the cinders in the human race. For cash in advance, a citizen can insure himself against bodily blights, perils of the seize, benighted motors, ignited metres, banana skins, pillow-slips, sleep-walking, land-slides, gravel rash, dog-bite, catsnip, mat-slip, broken promises, fractured relations, and the unnatural force of natural forces. But actuarily, no plausible scheme has been evolved for insuring man against the accident of birth. In fact, it is equal odds whether a reputable rate-payer will enter the ring as a ring-worm or a contagious disease. Nature gives no guarantee that the vital spark intended for the latest addition to the O'Hades (both doing well), is not sparking round the jungles of Siam decorated with monkey glands and nut-crackers, and versus vices.

Perusing the fallacious fauna at the Zoo, I shudder to think how easily I might have been precipitated into this hyphenated world, wearing all-over whiskers, four-handed feet, an incurable spinal promontory on the southern seaboard, an appetite for vitamin A straight; a weakness for mud-rolls, taking an upside down view of life, expressing myself bronchially, keeping my hair on, and taking life as it comes without fear of flavour.