“But it is. A very real, serious disease. Its actual name is coryza.”
“Bogy-talk,” commented Grandma Sharpless scornfully. “Big names for little things.”
“Not a little thing at all, as we should all realize if our official death-records really dealt in facts.”
“Death-records?” said Grandma Sharpless incredulously. “People don’t die of colds, do they?”
“Hundreds every year; all around us.”
“Well, I never hear of it.”
“Are you sure? Think back and recall how many of your friends’ obituary notices include some such sentence as this: ‘Last Thursday evening Mr. Smith caught a severe cold, from which he took to his bed on Saturday, and did not leave it again until his death yesterday morning?’ Doesn’t that sound familiar?”
“So familiar,” cried Mr. Clyde, “that I believe the newspapers keep it set up in type.”
“But the newspaper always goes on to say that Mr. Smith developed pneumonia or grip or bronchitis, and died of that, not of the cold,” objected Mrs. Sharpless.
“Oh, yes. In the mortality records poor Smith usually appears under the heading of one of the well-recognized diseases. It would hardly be respectable to die of a cold, would it?”