It has all other forms of amusement hushed to a lullaby—take it from Uncle Hank.
As a Bad Boy the grip has every other disease slapped to a sobbing stand-still.
It's dollars to pretzels that the grip germ is the brainiest little bug that was ever chased by a doctor.
I was sitting quietly at home reading Maeterlinck on Auction Bridge when suddenly I began to sneeze like a Russian regiment answering roll call.
Friend wife was deep in the mysteries of Ibsen's latest achievement, "The Rise and Fall of the Hobble Skirt," but she politely acknowledged my first sneeze with the customary "Gesundheit!"
Then she trailed along bravely with her responses for ten or fifteen minutes, but it was no use—I had more sneezes in my system than there are "Gesundheits!" in the entire German nation, including principalities, possessions across the sea, and the Musical Union.
"John," she ventured after a time, "you are getting a cold!"
"I'm not getting it," I sniffed; "I have it now."
What a mean, contemptible little creature a grip germ must be. Absolutely without any of the finer instincts, it sneaks into people's systems disguised as an ordinary cold. It isn't on the level, like appendicitis or inflammatory rheumatism, both of which are brave and fearless and will walk right up to you and kick you on the shins, big as you are.
Nobody ever knows just what make-up the grip germs will put on to break into the human system, but once they get a foothold in the epiglottis nothing can remove them except inward applications of dynamite.