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Show HIS TASK TOO GREAT. Illustrating the frequent ignorance of his own wares displayed by the selling agent, the following (true) story is told by Mr. H. W. Lander In "How to Buy Life Insurance." in the January World's Work-There Work-There are today some thousands of varieties of life Insurance policies, each of which has a technical name and is capable of being made quite unintelligible unintelli-gible to the average man. Some unscrupulous un-scrupulous agents trade on this; many 4 do not really understand the meanins; of terms themselves, but have learned their lesson, parrot-like; and most of them apparently find It unnecessary-to describe in plain English to those about to insure what they are contracting for. The result Is a mass of misinformation and confusion about the whole subject. For instance, an agent was trying to Insure an editor on some new plan. Th editor had a theory that any fact could be put Into plain, every-day- English, if the man behind the tact really knew what he was talking about. After listening lis-tening to an involved flow of "premiums." "prem-iums." "deferred dividends." "cash-surrender "cash-surrender values," and "optional choices," he said gravely: ' "See here, I don't understand what you're talking about. But I'll tell you what I'll do: If you'll writ that proposition prop-osition out In ordinary English, so thai an ordinary man can understand tt. I'll not only take the policy, but I'll publish the explanation as. an article and pay ycu a hundred dollars for it." "Will I? Sure. I will " exclaimed the overjoyed agent, thinking he had Indeed In-deed struck in easy Job. And he de- parted adjuring the editor not to forget. for-get. A week passed by. The agent called up on the telephone to Fay that he was working on the thins. There was les exultation in his voice. Two weeks more elapsed. The editor had forgotten the whole thing, when the agent's card came in one day. It wis followed by the man himself. "Well." said the editor. "Got my article?" ar-ticle?" "N-no," said th? agent sheepishly. "The fact Is. I guess. I can't do It th way you want it, after all. Let's call U It U hardly too much to say that this Is typical. j |