Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1876 — A Bad Cold. [ARTICLE]

A Bad Cold.

/,£X‘'" > * dool4 ” i ’ “ ° blect swelled and shiny nose may look, and without regard to the fact that his voice is as inaudible and maudlin as that of a regular-bred whisky-bibber. Nobody with the least portion of the milk of human kindness in his breast would laugh at his watery eyes or make unkind remarks when he blew Ms nose. Everybody is liable to a “bad cold.” The rich man as well as the poor man has to succumb to its baleftil influence; and not all the money of the proudest millionaire in the land can purchase him exemption from it. And if it is any satisfaction to the hod-carrier or rag-picker to know that the Rothschilds and Queen Victoria have noses just as red and stuffed up when they have colds as their brethren tower down in the scale of wealth and power, then they can have that satisfaction. A cold in the head generally begins in sneezing. You think if you could only sneezeyou should be relieved from that uneasy tickling in the nose and that heavy feeling in the head. You go to the window and you look at the sun, and you squint your eyes, and hold your breath, and then the coveted sneeze comes —first one, then two, and then half a dozen in rapid succession. Then your handkerchief comes into play, and for about five minutes you feel better. You retire to the fireside and put on more wood, or coal, and wonder what does make it so cold this time of year. By and by there is a “ tight” feeling about your throat and head; every tooth in your jaws seems to have started out a little and it appears to you that it would be a positive relief to take a mallet and drive them back into their places again. There is a sensation down your back as if a mouse with very cold feet war chasing another mouse with still colder feet just on the line of your spinal column, and a good fire is the only thing on earth you especially care for. Food you do not want and herb tea is always the next thing to total despair and misery. Handkerchiefs are in demand, and » half-dozen a day is a very moderate allowance. Blow, blow, is the order of the day, to say nothing of the order of the night. Vou feel cross all over. You wish folks wouldn’t look at you.

You are drowsy and you want your feet on the fender and a blanket over your shoulders. Your teeth start out a little farther. Your eyes are so weak you can hardly hold them open. Your head feels as if a ten-horse power steam-engine had been established therein and was in operation with all the steam on. Every hair on your cranium is sore—that is if you do not wear a wig. Your limbs ache and that old rheumatic twinge in your joints grows painfully troublesome. You huddle up in your chair, and snuff hartshorn, and burn vinegar on a hot shovel, and bathe your sore throat in alcohol. If you happen to be married, and have no regard for the feelings and Ike affections of those around you, you descend to the degradation of eating onions stewed in sugar or molasses, with poultices of the same aromatic vegetable on your chest. All your friend's laugh at you and your woful air, and tell you not to make such a dreadful fuss about a little cold! They tell you it’s the fashion to have a cold; and then they quote that abominably trite saying, which seems to work in on every occasion: “One might as well be out of the world as out of fashion,” and then they hasten to tell you about their colds, and the colds of their children and their neighbors—and so on—ah, you know just hoW it is. And before they get ready to stop you feel as if you could strangle the whole lot of them without a throb of compunction. That night you take a sweat, and wake up in the morning as limp and spiritless as a muslin dress in a thunder-shower, and with a feeling of “ Don’t care whether school keeps or not’’ all over you.— Kate Thom, in N. Y. Weekly.