Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1915 — DO YOU HAVE HAY FEVER? [ARTICLE]

DO YOU HAVE HAY FEVER?

Then Doubtless You Suffer Also From the Solicitous Friend—Cures by Hearsay. I affect hay fever on the eighteenth day of every August, beginning at a quarter past three in the afternoon. Robert C. Benchley writes in Vanity Fair. From then until September 20, along about ten o’clock at night, my friends are never at a loss for a merry laugh or a jocund remark about my appearance. I am not a proud man, but I have sensibilities. I therefore have a personal interest in all alleged hay fever reliefs. But hay fever cures always come secondhand —by hearsay. Someone snuggles up to you and says: “Oh, do you have hay fever?” (to which the Goldbergian answer would be, “No, I paint my nose and eyes red every day to frighten the gypsy moths away") and then, with an air of purveying diplomatic secrets they confide that they have" “a friend who used to have hay fever, oh, terribly; couldn’t breathe, and all that sort of thing, you know; and someone told him of this kind of powder arrangement which you snuff up your nose and then nold your head under water for a minute or two, and, do you know, he's never had a touch of hay fever since he tried it” And if you’d like, they’ll ask their friend where to send for it, and they take your telephone number go that they can let you know all about it. Only if you are hardened to the type, you give them the number of the zoo, or the aquarium, or something impersonal like that, for the chances are that when they do call you up it will be to suggest an addition to your life insurance policy. It’s mighty funny that you never run across the original friend in the first place. No one ever steps right up to you like a man says in so many words, “This has cured me of hay fever,” pointing the while at a clearly labeled bottle. • _