“If it don’t cure them, it can’t more than kill them”*…
Your correspondent has been wrestling with a remarkably recalcitrant rhinovirus. Searching for solutions, he found this…
While the Civil War was raging back East, Samuel Clemens (who had recently begun using the pseudonym Mark Twain) lived in Virginia City, Nevada, where he came down with a serious cold and bronchitis that plagued him for the much of the summer in 1863. His ailments didn’t keep him from traveling, first to the home of his friend Adair Wilson near Lake Bigler (now Lake Tahoe) and then to Steamboat Springs. In a series of letters and reports to newspaper editors in Virginia City and San Francisco, Clemens detailed his adventures and the spirited (if half-hearted) attempts to attack his illness with various remedies…
More backstory, and Twain’s piece in in its short-but-glorious entirety, at “How to Cure a Cold.” (Your correspondent settled, as Twain did, on the remedy featured finally in the piece…)
* Mark Twain (from the story featured above)
###
As we reach for the tissues, we might send bounteous birthday greetings to the incomparable Jane Austen; she was born on this date in 1775. One of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism, biting irony, and sensible social commentary– along with her persuasive plots– have earned her a place of pride among readers and scholars/critics alike.
Check out Five Books on Jane Austen.
Portrait of Jane Austen, drawn by her sister Cassandra (c. 1810)