Show CURING A COLD WHILE atra on a visit to england a few years ago it fell to my lot to pass through a singular experienced experience the recollection of which remains riv eted on my memory like a fire in an eastern hotel or a runaway in a western cadion cablon As usual the weather which to the native taste may seem just the thing was to my naturalized american ideas disgustingly damp and dirty at least from very early in the autumn to exceedingly late in the spring for an englishman generally gets a patented dislike to english fogs with his first papers in america and this is intensified when he becomes fully naturalized the british cornucopia is always full of everything to an american except what we call fine weather one week of our salt lake climate as described by the sanguine but truthful secretary of the chamber of commerce would be such a red letter day in england as to shed a glorious gleam of sunshine over the whole year A few days like we enjoy even in september or october sprinkled through an english summer would raise the value of real estate in london four thousand live five hundred feet above the level of the highest tide ever reached by british fi financial n ancial waters capitol hill prices would be as a bottomless boom compared with the sudden rise thus produced across the sea but a salt lake sun never rose or set a chamber of commerce day never dawned or departed during my visit and feeling the lack of that genial element as I 1 traveled to and fro swing seeing the sights I 1 caught a severe english cold which with the harmonious accompaniment of an american vamping bamping cough and a scotch bagpipe wheeze kept me awake at night and brought a smile of satisfaction to the face of an undertaker who listened with concealed delight from his office across the way I 1 had continued in this condition several weeks my constitution getting weaker every day while the cough and the undertaker grew correspondingly more healthy when a friend who had become acclimated called on me and in the plenitude of his sympathy advised me to take a vapor bath the remedy he said was not very severe and was as certain as death in england or taxes in america the advice seemed to be sensible it was reasonable atlease at least As the absorbing of lEn engligh glish moisture through my unsuspecting pores had produced the cold what method of cure could be more consistent than the expulsion of the foreign fluid through the same avenues under the genial influence of the british bath I 1 resolved to try it my friend gave me the address of a party by the name of brown who was pronounced most excellent in his line and who with the exception of being a little hard of hearing my friend said was really considered as perfect a manipulator of bronchial and complaints as nature and science combined had yet produced in the metropolis taking the address in question and a four wheeler I 1 was in the course of human events duly seated mated in the reception room of mr browns scientific bathhouse by a desperate vocal effort that nearly dislocated my larynx and after much violent but intelligent gesticulation I 1 managed to inform the deaf proprietor that I 1 was suffering from a cold and desired his artistic assistance in subduing it he led the way to one of a long line of private rooms where stood a machine resembling only in appearance pe arance however a refrigerator it required but a few moments to disrobe and step into the machine the interior of which I 1 found to be lined with perforated metal pipes the seat mat being low the back of ofay my neck just below the cerebellum fitted into the posterior half of a circular aperture in the top of the concern and my throat filled the other half as the door came to with a cuck click like a spring lock I 1 was thus with the fortunate exception of my head thoroughly encased as if in a coffin brown with a skilful and knowing look adjusted ad some taps and screws at the bottom of the affair and placing a thermometer on the top of it left me to my thoughts and the mercy of the sweatbox sweat box no sooner had he gone than the hot steam came rushing upon me from the pipes inside and if the reader ever had his cuticle brought suddenly into contact with the steam from the spout of a tea kettle he can perhaps form a faint idea of what I 1 suffered for the next ten minutes as the steam increased to the power of a locomotive browns thermometer went up to degrees outside and how far I 1 went up inside I 1 never found out my mind began to act briskly in expedients for instant relief and as the quaker said something had to be done and that right off but what could I 1 do I 1 was fastened completely in the box and my efforts to extricate myself were perfectly us useless elete at last a thought struck me while I 1 was shut in I 1 shut up so I 1 sent forth a yell as from a soul in torment brownl brown brown I 1 shouted no brown came too deaf to hear his attendant if he had one must certainly hear me but no he had been dismissed to attend to other customers who were not so sick as I 1 was and need so effectual a treatment brown had bad said he would abend to my aw cam himself so sol I 1 yelled outs out I 1 I 1 brown till I 1 was so exhausted and faint that had it not been for my chin and cerebellum being supported by the hot steaming board which formed the top of my coffin I 1 would have dropped into the box and died there I 1 thought of the dear ones left at home of contracts still unfulfilled abroad and wondered if I 1 had paid up the last assessment on my insurance policy I 1 pictured in my mind the most appropriate prop epitaph to go on my tombstone in memory of our friend with the touching con elusion the good the die young etc at last a boy the only attendant that had heard me came in and said I 1 did you call sir call well 14 should hould goodness he said looking at the thermometer we its gone up aint it yes tes and pm im about gone up too I 1 replied he changed the cocks pulled several levers and left himself the air cooled a little and 1 was beginning to feel it about 85 degrees in the shade and grateful for deliverance from a dreadful death when with a knowing look and a bustling gait in came the proprietor one glance at the thermometer and it struck him I 1 was not getting a warm enough bath so in a twinkling he jumped to the taps and turned the steam on again hotter hosier than ever I 1 hallowed hallooed hallo oed I 1 too HOT TW TOO HOT V deaf as a post poet he thought though tI I 1 was complaining of the cold and smil ing encouragingly said I 1 wll soon come up now and rushed out of the apartment no attendant now answered my yells as the boy thought it was only my nerves and that thata as he had turned off the steam I 1 would soon find it cold enough to suit me but a patient heard me and released me from the machine and as I 1 escaped I 1 vowed that if I 1 ever took another vapor bath it would not be in a box without a latch or string on the inside nor with a deaf idiot for my only attendant As I 1 left my cold in the bath coffin along with considerable of my m adipose tissue I 1 forgave the proprietor and even recommended him to my friends but never did I 1 fail to mention that he was hard of hearing ff 11 and invariably advised the patient to arrange for an easy exit from the sweat box and to hold the damper in his hand during the entire operation from its teakettle incipiency to its lopomo tive termination alaon CHAS W |