persons insured in 1866, over 90,000 adopted the .note system ! The popular verdict is in favor of this system, and will not be reversed so long as companies pay dividends ranging from 30 to 60 per cent. The last annual dividend of the Connecticut Mutual was sixty per cent ! So long as half, more or less, of the premiums are,

turned, we repeat, so long will this system be the popular one, The public are wise enough to take their half in advance, when they can get it. The Connecticut Mutual gives policy-holders a choice of the two systems, and the note system is almost invariably chosen.

Finally, we remark under this head, the note system is rooted and grounded on sound financial principals ; and notwithstanding the calumnies and misrepresentations of partisans, it has grown and will continue to grow in public favor. It is a plan devised for the benefit of the insured, and not for a company or for stockholders. Every dollar invested tells to the utmost, and none paid except to the legitimate purposes of insurance. The most insurance possible should be had for the first years during which the policy runs, as their average continuance is but about eight years. Aiming at advantages twenty or thirty years hence, as in the all-cash system (if it has advantages even then), is to defeat to a great extent the very designs of insurance, and run a hazard against the facts and lessons of experience. It is providing for a risk when the hazard is gone ; as some writer has aptly said, it " is paying for a penalty ; " is providing for those who can provide for themselves. In short, a plan to secure a benefit when least needed, and depriving one's self of it when most needed. If by payment of an amount of cash, and giving an insurance note for an equal amount (which latter may be taken up by dividends, and in case of the Connecticut Mutual is fully), will secure a policy for double the amount the payment of the same amount of cash alone will secure, and equally as safe or safer, no sane man will hesitate as to a choice of plans.

DIVIDENDS.

Dividends in this Company are declared and paid four years after payment of the premium and, under the operation of the note system, they are available immediately in diminishing the first and each subsequent premium, and therefore practically and really annual dividends ; for in adjusting losses by death, dividends are anticipated at fifty per cent., and allowed upon each premium paid. So that there are no post mortem dividends as is practiced by many companies ; but complete adjustment of dividends and outstanding notes is made on the settlement of every policy, and in such a manner that the number of dividends will always equal the number of outstanding notes. The immediate practical effect of the dividend is equivalent, so far as the insurer is concerned, to a reduction of the premium to the actual cost of insurance.

AGENTS.

The Connecticut Mutual does its business principally through general agents, who are located at the large business centers of the RePublic—extending their operations from these points over the surrounding and adjacent country. They employ no traveling or itinerant agents. The Company require that all these agents shall thoroughly identify themselves with its interests, and to this end allow commissions on all renewals of policies, and by this means induce the feeling that he is established in a permanent business for life ; and that his home is with the Connecticut Mutual.

We are personally acquainted with some of these agents, and have been often interested to observe the zeal and earnestness of purpose they evince in advancing the interests and promoting and increasing the permanent prosperity of the Company—its well-being and solid strength seeming ever to claim their highest consideration, their undivided energy and efforts, as if upon its permanency and strength depended their own material welfare. It is not a subject of wonder that, with agents actuated by such motives—their whole hearts and best energies enlisted in the cause—this Company should have grown and prospered to such an unprecedented degree.

INTERESTING COMPARISON.

It is not our object to make any invidious comparisons between this and other life insurance companies, but as we are writing of the Connecticut Mutual as, in all the essential requisites, the very best Life Insurance Company in this country for the people to patronize—to seek within its folds the inestimable benefits of home and family protection,—we cannot more effectually demonstrate the truthfulness of this claim ,than by comparing its business and management with some of the other prominent life companies of the day. We will note a few comparisons between this Company and the Mutual Life, of New York, taken from the published statements of the two Companies reported by the Massachusetts and New York Insurance Commissioners. We select the Mu-