“It’s a cinch, Doc,” I said.

“Do you feel a roaring in the cornucopia with a tickling sensation in 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 porterhouse steak 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 does everything 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 apple and that there won’t be any core?”

“Yes!”

“When you look at the wall paper does your brain do a sort of loop-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 Colorado madura and is there a confused murmur in your brain like the sound of a hard working gas meter?”

“You’ve got me sized good and plenty, Doc!”

“Do you have insomnia, nightmare, loss of appetite, chills and fever 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 turn over on your left side, and when you turn over on your left side do you feel an impulse to jump out of bed and throw stones at a policeman?”

“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, bubonic plague?”

“You have something worse—­you have the grip,” he whispered gently.  “You see I tried hard to mention some symptom which you didn’t have, but you had them all, and the grip is the only disease in the world which makes a specialty of having every symptom known to medical jurisprudence.”

Then the doctor got busy with the pencil gag and left me enough prescriptions to keep the druggist in pocket money throughout the summer.

[Illustration:  Enough prescriptions to keep the druggist in pocket money throughout the summer.]

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

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

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