Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1882 — Wealth and a Cold in the Head. [ARTICLE]

Wealth and a Cold in the Head.

People who are poor, and who catch cold and sneeze around, and have red noses, are apt to envy the rich, believing that those who are wealthy, and can take every precaution against raking cold, must be exempt from such annoyances, but statistics show that the millionaire is just as apt to take cold as the poor peanut roaster or the tramp, and his millionaire bazoo is just as liable to be blown as the poorest nose in the land. The same draft of air that gives the emigrant a cold in the forward oar, will pass along to the palace sleeping-car and blow up the trousers leg of the millionaire Senator and cause him to sneeze. He may wear underclothing that cost as much as the house of the poor man, but he cannot be exempt from cold that reddens his nose. And what can a millionaire do to cure his hightoned cold ? There is no expensive medicine, a dose or two of which can make him as good as new. He has got to go through the same treatment to cure himself as the washwoman has. He has got to soak his feet in mustard water, dnnk a bowl full of ginger tea, put a compress on his lungs, a mustard plaster on his back, an onion poultice on his throat and feet, and gargle the same diabolical stuff that the poor devil has. His millions, or his high position as statesman and a scholar and a judge of pine logs, does not help him when the cold comes. He may run well for office, but not better than his nose does for a cold. When the chill and the sneeze attacks a rich man he is on a par with the poorest of God’s creatures. Then what is the use of wealth, if it does not exempt the owner from a cold ? Some of the pooest men in this country are the healthiest, while some of the richest are the greatest invalids. The country is full of millionaires who are paralyzed, dyspeptic, rheumatic, and filled with chronic ailments that they would trade for a poor man’s health, and throw in all their money, and the poor man would not trade. If wealth would bring exemption from disease there would be an excuse for going it blind in search of wealth, but as it is almost certain to bring with it some diabolical disease that knocks the fun all out of a man, we advise poor men not to fool away their time trying to obtain the confounded stuff. We wouldn’t pick up a million dollars in the road, unless there was a guarantee that there was no gout or rheumatism or dyspepsia hanging onto it.— Peck's Sun.