From the Lawrence Daily World for Dec. 19, 1910:

“On the subject of ‘bad colds,’ which have been epidemic in Emporia as elsewhere during the last week, Walt Mason writes: ‘Nothing could be more annoying than a bad cold, and especially when everybody is afflicted with one. If one had the only cold in town it might be considered a distinction, and he could point to it with pride, and there certainly would be a melancholy pleasure in going around telling people how he felt. But when everybody has a bad cold this relief is impossible. When you meet a friend and begin telling him how you spent a sleepless night coughing and wheezing and doping yourself with onion syrup or hot lemonade, he immediately shows signs of impatience and weariness and takes the first opportunity to interrupt you, telling you that your cold is a four-flusher as compared with his. “Why, great suffering sideboards,” says he, “you don’t know what a bad cold is until you have had to drink a quart of coal oil and be warmed up in forty blankets and compelled to sweat for six hours, by the doctor’s orders. Oh, an ordinary cold is nothing. Wait until you have the grippe. I have had the grippe for five days and my sufferings baffle description. Don’t talk about your little old dinky cold to a man who has had a genuine case of the Russian grippe, with the czar’s initials blown on the side.”‘”