“But mumps and chicken-pox are real diseases,” protested Clyde. “And you think that a ‘cold,’ as you call it, isn’t.” “Why, no,” said Clyde hesitantly. “I wouldn’t call it a disease, any more than I’d call a sprain a broken leg.” “But it is. A very real, serious disease. Its actual name is coryza.” “Bogy-talk,” commented Grandma Sharpless scornfully. “Big names for little things.” “Not a little thing at all, as we should all realize if our official death-records really dealt in facts.” “Death-records?” said Grandma Sharpless incredulously. “People don’t die of colds, do they?” “Hundreds every year; all around us.” “Well, _I_ never hear of it.” “Are you sure? Think back and recall how many of your friends’ obituary notices include some such sentence as this: ‘Last Thursday evening Mr. Smith caught a severe cold, from which he took to his bed on Saturday, and did not leave it again until his death yesterday morning?’ Doesn’t that sound familiar?” “So familiar,” cried Mr. Clyde, “that I believe the newspapers keep it set up in type.” “But the newspaper always goes on to say that Mr. Smith developed pneumonia or grip or bronchitis, and died of that, not of the cold,” objected Mrs. Sharpless. “Oh, yes. In the mortality records poor Smith usually appears under the heading of one of the well-recognized diseases. It would hardly be respectable to die of a cold, would it?” “He doesn’t _die_ of the cold,” insisted the old lady. “He catches the cold and dies of something else.” “If I take a dose of poison,” the Health Master mildly propounded, “and fall down and break my neck, what do I die of?” “It’s no parallel,” said Grandma Sharpless. “And even if it is,” she added, tacitly abandoning that ground, “we’ve always had colds and we always will have ‘em.” “Not with my approval, at least,” remarked the Health Master. “I guess Providence won’t wait for your approval, young man.” “Then you regard coryza as a dispensation of Providence? The Presbyterian doctrine of foreordination, applied to the human nose,” smiled the physician. “We’re all predestined to the ailment, and therefore might as well get out our handkerchiefs and prepare to sneeze our poor sinful heads off. Is that about it?” “No, it isn’t! This is a green December and it means a full churchyard. We’re in for a regular cold-breeding season.” “Nonsense! Weather doesn’t breed colds.” “What does, then?”