Reader, my little tale, or, without plot as it is, you may say my long gossip, is at an end. It began about an empty house, and has run through the fortunes of a family. How like a path in life, where the first step ushers us onward we know not where; or, to compare small things with great, how like a philosopher picking up at random a simple stone, and thence being led on to the comprehension of the physical history of the world. But plotless tale, or rambling gossip, whichever it may be, I hope it has not been without its usefulness, but that it has served as one more piece of proof that integrity, charity, industry, and self-denial, if they do not always command success, give a man the best possible chance of obtaining it on the only condition which renders success worth having, namely, the preservation of self-respect.
[From Tait's Edinburgh Magazine.]
COLDS AND COLD WATER.
Who has not had a cold? or rather, who has not had many colds? Who does not know that malady which commences with slight chilliness, an uneasy feeling of being unwell, which does not justify abstinence from the ordinary business and occupations of the day, but deprives one of all satisfaction and enjoyment in them, and takes away all the salt and savor of life, even as it deprives the natural palate of its proper office, making all things that should be good to eat and drink vapid and tasteless? Who does not know the pain in the head, the stiff neck, the stuffy nose, the frequent sneeze, the kerchief which is oftener in the hand than in the pocket? Such, with a greater or less amount of peevishness, are the symptoms of the common cold in the head; which torments its victim for two or three days, or perhaps as many weeks, and then departs, and is forgotten. Few people take much notice of colds; and yet let any one, who is even moderately liable to their attacks, keep an account of the number of days in each year when he has been shut out by a cold from a full perception of the pleasures and advantages of life, and he will find that he has lost no inconsiderable portion of the sum total of happy existence through their malign influence. How many speeches in Parliament and at the Bar, that should have turned a division or won a cause, have been marred because the orator has had a cold which has confused his powers, stifled his voice, and paralyzed all his best energies! How many pictures have failed in expressing the full thoughts of the artist, because he has had a cold at that critical stage of the work when all his faculties of head and hand should have been at their best to insure the fit execution of his design! How many bad bargains have been made, how many opportunities lost in business, because a cold has laid its leaden hand upon them, and converted into its own dull nature what might have resulted in a golden harvest! How many poems—but no: poetry can have nothing in common with a cold. The Muses fly at the approach of flannel and water-gruel. It is not poems that are spoiled, but poets that are rendered of impossible existence by colds. Can one imagine Homer with a cold, or Dante? But these were southerns, and exempt by climate from this scourge of the human race in Boreal regions. But Milton or Shakspeare, could they have had colds? Possibly some parts of "Paradise Regained" may have been written in a cold. Possibly the use of the handkerchief in "Othello," which is banished as an impropriety by the delicate critics of France from their version of the Moor of Venice, may have been suggested by familiarity with that indispensable accessory in a cold. Colds are less common in the clear atmosphere of Paris than in the thick and fog-laden air of London; and this may account for the difference of national taste, on this point. It is said of the great German Mendelssohn, that he always composed sitting with his feet in a tub of cold water. This was not the musician, but his grandfather, the metaphysician, and father of that happy and contentedly obscure intermediate Mendelssohn, who used to say, "When I was young, I was known as the son of the great Mendelssohn; and now that I am old, I am known as the father of the great Mendelssohn." But who ever was known to compose any thing while sitting with his feet in a tub of hot water, and with the composing draught standing on the table at his side, to remind him that in the matter of composition he is to be a passive, and not an active subject? How many marriages may not have been prevented by colds? The gentleman is robbed of his courage, and does not use his opportunity for urging his suit; or the lady catches a cold, and appears blowing her nose, and with blanched cheeks and moist eyes:
"The sapphire's blue within her eyes is seen;
Her lips the ruby's choicest glow disclose;
Her skin is like to fairest pearls I ween;
But ah! the lucid crystal tips her nose."
And so the coming declaration of love is effectually nipped in the bud by the unromantic realities of the present catarrh.
Napoleon, as is well known, lost the battle of Leipsig in consequence of an indigestion brought on by eating an ill-dressed piece of mutton; and Louis Philippe, in February, 1848, fled ignominiously from the capital of his kingdom because he had a cold, and could not use the faculties which at least might have secured for him as respectable a retreat to the frontier as was enjoyed by his predecessor Charles the Tenth. He might have shown fight; he might have thrown himself upon the army, or upon the National Guard; he might have done a hundred things better for his own fame, rather than get into a hack cab and run away. But it was not to be: Louis Philippe had the influenza; and Louis Philippe with the influenza was not the same man who had shown so much craft and decision in the many previous emergencies of his long and eventful life. Louis Philippe, without a cold, had acquitted himself creditably in the field of battle, had taught respectably in schools, had contrived for himself and his family the succession to a kingdom, had worked and plotted through all the remarkable events with which his name is associated, and by which it will ever be remembered in the romance of history; but Louis Philippe, with a cold, subsided at once and ingloriously into simple John Smith in a scratch-wig.
Of places in which colds are caught it is not necessary to be particular. For, as a late Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench laid it down in summing up to a jury, in a case of sheep-stealing, after some time had been wasted in showing that the stolen sheep had been slaughtered with a particular knife—any knife will kill a sheep—so it may be said that a cold may be caught any where: on the moor or on the loch; traveling by land or by water; by rail or by stage; or in a private carriage, or walking in the streets; or sitting at home or elsewhere, in a draught, or out of a draught, but more especially in it. Upon a statistical return of the places in which colds have been caught, by persons of both sexes, and under twenty-one years of age, founded upon the answers of the patients themselves, it appears that more colds are caught upon the journey in going to school, and at church, than at the theatre and in ball-rooms. Upon a similar return from persons liable to serve as jurymen in London and Middlesex, it appears that a majority of colds is caught in courts of justice; to which statement, perhaps, more confidence is due than to the former, as it is not known that Dr. Reid has ventilated any of the churches or theatres in the metropolis. Indeed, if the ancient physical philosophers, who had many disputes upon the first cause of cold, had enjoyed the advantage of living in our days and country, they might have satisfied themselves on this matter, and at the same time have become practically acquainted with the working of our system of jurisprudence, by attending in Westminster Hall, when they would go away perhaps with some good law, but most certainly with a very bad cold in their heads. Upon the returns from ladies with grown-up daughters and nieces, it appears from their own statements, that more colds are caught at evening parties than any where else; which is in remarkable discrepancy with the statements of the young ladies themselves, as before mentioned. The same curious want of agreement is found to prevail as to the number of colds caught on water-parties, pic-nics, archery-meetings, and the like, which, according to one set of answers, never give rise to colds, but which would certainly be avoided by all prudent persons if they gave implicit belief to the other.