Los Angeles herald., 1910-09-25
HIS COLD


he took it most seriously. His Slight
est personal ailment always aroused in
him the most solemn concern and anx
iety.
This is a characteristic of many men;
they will take most seriously a slight
indisposition of which a woman would
hardly speak.
And now he went around gloomily
with frequent reference to the dan
ger of summer colds" How they often
led to pneumonia and many other Sc
rious things. And how peculiarly sus-
ceptible he was to all those things
BY the end of the second day he had
Helen thoroughly alarmed. From child
hood she had had countless colds, pain
full neuralgia, sore-throated colds. And
she never thought of taking them Sc
riously. But now she was really
alarmed about Warren. What if it
should result in pneumonia or con-
sumption as he so direfully intimated?
She hovered about him, made him
hot lemonades, kept him carefully out
of draughts Che was always fussy
about draughts) and showed her anx-
iety in countless ways. And he ac-
cepted it all with a gloomy, lordly toll
erance.
The third afternoon he came home
from the office declaring he had
''high fever" And when she felt his
forehead and found it did feel slightly
feverish her anxiety increased.
"Oh, Warren, I think we ought to
have a doctor at once!"
He made no protest. His silence i'm
piled that he thought his condition
quite serious enough for a doctor
Helen herself would never have
Al. .f rsYarr fnr~ ny a
yet she always ran temperature with
her colds-a much higher temperature
than Warren now had. But with him
she felt it was very different. Had
he not intimated his extreme suscep-
tibility to pneumonia?
''There's a doctor next door-havent
you noticed the sign?"
ST don't want any strange doctor
phone for DR.. Eldridge."
DR.. Eldridge was Warren's physician
before his marriage. He was suave
tactful practitioner, who gave to War
rens most trivial ailment the serious
and grave consideration which some
other physician might not give.
But when Helen telephoned she was
told that DIR. Eldridge was away on
two weeks vacation and had left his
practice in charge of DR.. Braxton
DR.. Braxton came. He was brusque
plain-spoken man, very different from
the polite Dr. Eldridge. He had in
ferred from Helen's hurried and anx-
ious call that the case was an urgent
one. And when he saw Warren, felt
his pulse, looked at his tongue, he said
brusquely:
'"Why, you needn't have sent for me-
Nothing on earth but cold, and a
light one at that. You'll be all right
tomorrow"
Warren was indignant
s'You don't understand my constitu-
ton, sir. I'm most susceptible to colds
and their after effects. And I want
something to stop this now, before it
grows worse"
"Then take quinine-if you must take
something. Five grains every four
hours"
"Quinine,' contemptuously. Last
winter I took enough quinine to stuff
pincushion-no effect at ALL"
''Then take spirits of camphos. Ever
try that?"
mo" Grossly, feeling that camphor
was an absurdly simple and childish
remedy.
"Well, I'll give you some now"
He asked Helen for lump of sugar,
on which he poured ten drops of CAM
phor, and then gave it to Warren with
a brusque: s'lH
'eThere. that'll fix you up all right"
And Warren proceeded to suck the
camphor-soaked sugar with solemn
ity which would have struck even
Helen as ludicrous had she not been
so anxiously concerned. @Ha4A
The doctor laughed outright sDont
look so solemn about it, hg.