Franz von Schönthan.
HOT PUNCH.
THERE is one thing that is beginning to strike me as very odd in life. It is how you make experiences without knowing it, and time goes on, and suddenly it dawns upon you that such and such an event was an experience. For instance, you spend an evening out of doors, because the weather is inviting, and you don’t in the least suspect the gentle breeze that is caressing you of any evil design, and then the next day, when the rheumatism sets in, or a toothache, or a stiff neck, or something or other of a surgical nature, which is best met by an application of spirits of camphor, then you know for certain that you were in a draught, and you are the wiser for the experience. You promise yourself solemnly that you will not be caught that way again, but the next time maybe it is not the draught, but sour milk, or beer that was too cold, and instead of a swollen cheek you find yourself in possession of the native semicolon bacillus, which luckily is unable to exist in hot punch, as they have discovered at the Imperial Health Office. This is a great thing, for when Frenchmen raise diseases in their undrained seaport towns, we in Berlin don’t have to confine ourselves to drinking carbolic lemonade, as we once feared, when we had lent Dr. Koch to France, and the papers were so full of cholera that one hated to touch them.
Hot punch is a scientific discovery, which is efficient against the very fear of the disease, as I had occasion to observe in the case of Frau Postlieutenant, who was so moved by reading the papers that she was once affected in a peculiar manner, and could not find her pulse when she felt for it, which put her in an indescribable state of mind; for when the pulse is gone the last stage is approaching, and it is time to give a thought to one’s funeral. A glass or two of hot punch allayed the symptoms immediately, and before fifteen minutes were gone Frau Postlieutenant could feel her pulse all over. She assured us that it was hammering in her toes quite as strongly as in her temples. She was saved.
“Frau Buchholz,” said she, “if you had not happened to come in just now, who knows but the black omnibus would have had to be harnessed for me by this time?”
“It did look bad enough,” I replied, “but not so bad as all that. It was enough, though, to frighten a person out of her seven wits.”
“I shan’t read another paper until the fruit season is over,” said the Frau Postlieutenant.
“There you are right,” said I. “A juicy pear in one hand, and in the other thrilling accounts of the cholera would be more than Goliath could stand.”
So this was an experience once more, to the effect that not everything that the papers bring is good for people, and that there is no better thing to bring one’s pulse back than a glass of punch, provided it is good and hot.
The Frau Postlieutenant does not belong to that class of persons who try to give themselves an air by being ungrateful; who, when they have visited anywhere, talk about the discomfort of the beds, and, when they have been asked out, run to tell their neighbour the next day that it is quite beyond them to understand how any one can venture to offer such poor refreshments. No, she is not that sort, for when she had quite recovered she sent around to invite me to take a ride with her to the Grunewald, and drink coffee at Paulsborn, and then back again by way of Schildhorn. She had hired a very swell turn-out for the afternoon, first-class, with a coachman in livery, whose coat-tails, gorgeous with buttons, hung down from the box like a yard and a half of starry sky.