Get Next!, Page 4

  JOHN HENRY ON THE GRIP

  Say, did you ever spar a few hot rounds with a real attack of grip?

  When it comes right down to a case of being a Bad Boy the grip hasevery other disease slapped to a sit-down.

  I had the grip some weeks ago and ever since my system has feltlike eight cents worth of cheese.

  The medicine sharps tell us that the grip is caused by a littlegerm which emigrated to this country originally from Russia.

  If that's the case I'm glad the Japs put the boots to the Czar. Iwish they would go after him again and kick his crown off.

  I'll bet even money that the father of the first grip germ musthave been a bombshell and his mother was some relation to one ofKuropatkin's retreats.

  It's dollars to pretzels that the grip germ is the busiest ideathat was ever chased by a doctor.

  Nobody knows just how or when the grip germs break into the system,but once they get a foothold in the epiglottis nothing can removethem except inward applications of dynamite.

  The grip germ hates the idea of race suicide.

  From one small germ there will arise and go forth a family the sizeof which was never dreamed of in the philosophy of our wise andbusy President.

  I don't know just exactly how they happened to warm wise to me, buta newly married couple of grip germs took a notion to build a nestsomewhere on the outskirts of my solar plexus, and two hours laterthey had about 233 children attending the public school in mymedusa oblongata; and every time school would let out for recess Iwould go up in the air and hit the ceiling with my top-knot.

  Before the next morning came all these grip children had graduatedfrom school and after tearing down the school-house the whole bunchhad married and had large families of their own, and all hands wereout paddling their canoes on my alimentary canal.

  By nine o'clock that morning there must have been eighty-fivemillion grip germs armed with self-loading revolvers all trying toshoot their initials over the walls of my interior department.

  It was fierce!

  When the doctor arrived on the scene I was carrying enoughconcealed weapons to exterminate the entire Japanese army.

  I'm up to one thing and that is that the Russians couldn't beat theJaps because all the national energy and vitality emigrated fromSt. Petersburg and came over here with the first grip germs.

  If the Czar of all the Russians had been a wise Little Father hewould have encouraged the grip germs to remain loyal to theirnative land and then he could have sent them out to Manchuria tobite the ramparts out of General Oyama instead of chasinginoffensive American citizens into the drug stores.

  "Well, anyway the medicine mixer blew in, threw his saws behind thesofa, put his dip net on the mantlepiece, and took a fall out of mypulse.

  "Ah!" he said, after he had noted that my tongue looked like acurrycomb.

  "The same to you, Doc," I said.

  "Ah!" he said, looking hard at the wall.

  "Say, Doc!" I whispered; "there's no use to cut off my leg becausethe germs will hide in my elbow."

  "Do you feel shooting pains in the cerebellum near the apex of thecosmopolitan?" inquired the doctor.

  "Surest thing you know," I said.

  "Have you a buzzing in the ears, and a confused sound like distantlaughter in the panatella?" he asked.

  "It's a cinch, Doc," I said.

  "Do you feel a roaring in the cornucopia with a tickling sensationin the diaphragm?" he asked.

  "Right again," I whispered.

  "Do the joints feel sore and pinched like a pool-room?" he said.

  "Right!"

  "Does your tongue feel rare and high-priced like a porterhousesteak at a summer resort?"

  "It do!"

  "Do you feel a spasmodic fluttering in the concertina?"

  "Yes!"

  "Have you a sort of nervous hesitation in your hunger and doeseverything you eat taste like an impossible sandwich?"

  "Keno!"

  "Does your nerve centre tinkle-tinkle like a breakfast bell?"

  "Right again!"

  "Have you a feeling that the germs have attacked your Adam's appleand that there won't be any core?"

  "Yes!"

  "When you look at the wall paper does your brain do a sort ofloop-the-loop and cause you to meld 100 aces or double pinochle?"

  "Yes, and 80 kings, too!"

  "Do you feel a slight palpitation of the membrane of the Coloradomadura and is there a confused murmur in your brain like the soundof a hard working gas meter?"

  "You've got me sized good and plenty, Doc!"

  "Do you have insomnia, nightmare, loss of appetite, chills andfever and concealed respiration in the carolina perfecto?"

  "That's the idea, Doc."

  "When you lie on your right side do you have an impulse to turnover on your left side, and when you turn over on your left side doyou feel an impulse to jump out of bed and throw stones at apoliceman?"

  "There isn't anything you can mention, Doc, that I haven't got!"

  "Ah!" said the doctor; "then that settles it."

  "Tell me the truth, Doctor!" I groaned; "what is it, bubonicplague?"

  "You have something worse--you have the grip," he whispered gently."You see I tried hard to mention some symptom which you didn'thave, but you had them all, and the grip is the only disease in theworld which makes a specialty of having every symptom known tomedical jurisprudence."

  Then the doctor got busy with the pencil gag and left me enoughprescriptions to keep the druggist in pocket money throughout thesummer.

  Enough prescriptions to keep the druggist in pocketmoney throughout the summer.]

  Later my wife came in and asked me how I felt, and when I began todiscourse amiably about undertakers she put up a howl that broughtthe rest of the family around the bedside on a hurry call.

  When I told them I had the grip each and every member of thehousehold from Uncle Peter down to the cook began to suggestremedies, and if I had taken half they suggested they could havesold me to a junk dealer and got good money.

  That evening our next door neighbor, Bud Taylor, came in andadvised me to take quinine and whiskey every time I felt a shootingpain.

  I took his advice, but at the end of the first hour the score was98 to 37 in favor of the shooting pains, and the whiskey had suchan effect on the quinine that it made the germs jealous, so betweenthem they cooked up a little black man who advised me to chase Budout of the house, which I did by throwing medicine bottles at him.

  That night the whiskey and quinine held a director's meeting withthe germs and then they wound up with a sort of Mardi Gras paradethrough my system.

  I was the goat!

  When daylight broke I was a total wreck, and I swore that the nextperson that said whiskey and quinine to me would get all his.

  After breakfast another friend of ours, Jack Gibson, blew in, andafter he looked me over his weary eye fell on the decanter.

  Then Jack smacked his lips and whispered that the best cure for thegrip was a glass of whiskey and quinine every time I felt chillsand fever, and he'd be glad to join me.

  When loving hands picked Jack up at the bottom of the stairs he wasalmost insulted, but he quieted down when my wife explained to himthat I was suffering not only from the grip but that I had also aslight attack of jiu jitsu.

  After weeks of study devoted to the subject I have come to theconclusion that the only way to cure the grip is to stay sick untilyou get better.

  That's what I did!