10 Great Life and Annuity Ads From 100 Years Ago

10. New York Life

Selling life insurance is a holy mission.

Job’s Turkey & The Church Mouse

The only authentic records we have respecting Job’s Turkey and the Church Mouse are the proverbs:

“Poor as Job’s Turkey,” and

“Poor as a Church Mouse.”

It may therefore be safely assumed that Job had a turkey, and that a mouse dwelt in a church, and that both turkey and mouse were very much attenuated.

Job was righteous; he was rich; he had a large family; he sat as chief and dwelt as king among his fellows. But when troubles came, they came “not single spies, but in battalions.” In a day all outward possessions were lost. The Sabeans, the Chaldeans, “the fire of God,” and the “great wind from the wilderness” made a clean sweep, and the bearers of bad news trod upon each other’s heels to tell it. Job still had his health, but not for long, for soon he lost that also. It is not profanity to say, “Hell was let loose upon him,” for that is what the record says, only in more polite language. And then came the run-in with his four selfrighteous friends — men who professed to know the will of God and who said in short, — ‘It’s all your fault, Job. Come now, own up, what evil have you done?”

When there were 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen and 500 she-asses upon Job’s estate, the turkeys fared well, but when these were all gone, and with them all Job’s servants except the four who escaped to tell the bad news, it must have been poor pickin’. Poor Turk! He had to scratch for a living — and he got thinner and thinner until it came to be a proverb — “Poor as Job’s Turkey.” Why make a mystery of a plain case? Job’s Turkey was poor because he didn’t get enough to eat!

It was the same with the Church Mouse. He was eminently respectable and liked to live in quiet surroundings. The church sociables and the meetings of the various societies when “light refreshments” were served always left a few fragments which, with judicious hoarding and self denial, kept the mouse alive. But he was so poor that any self-respecting cat would have disdained to eat him — poor because he didn’t get enough to eat!

Job’s Turkey and the Church Mouse were poor because they didn’t get enough to eat; some people don’t get enough to eat because they are poor! A man who is as rich as Job was can now arrange his affairs in such a way that the Sabeans, the Chaldeans, “the fire of God,” and the “great wind from the wilderness” cannot make him poor; and when he loses his health permanently, he will have better comforters than Job had.

The man who has only his hands to work with can so protect himself and his family that permanent loss of health will not mean total loss of income, nor loss of life mean that his wife will be “poor as a church mouse.” But he must get this protection before his ‘enemies are in sight.

Many agents of the New York Life Insurance Company have warned you of the approach of those enemies. Send for one to-day and learn how to defeat them.

New York Life Insurance Company, 346 Broadway, N.Y.

Darwin P. Kingsley, President