When the White House was burned in Virginia City, I lost my home, my happiness, my constitution, and my trunk.  The loss of the two first named articles was a matter of no great consequence, since a home without a mother, or a sister, or a distant young female relative in it, to remind you, by putting your soiled linen out of sight and taking your boots down off the mantelpiece, that there are those who think about you and care for you, is easily obtained.  And I cared nothing for the loss of my happiness, because, not being a poet, it could not be possible that melancholy would abide with me long.  But to lose a good constitution and a better trunk were serious misfortunes.  On the day of the fire my constitution succumbed to a severe cold, caused by undue exertion in getting ready to do something.  I suffered to no purpose, too, because the plan I was figuring at for the extinguishing of the fire was so elaborate that I never got it completed until the middle of the following week.

The first time I began to sneeze, a friend told me to go and bathe my feet in hot water and go to bed.  I did so.  Shortly afterward, another friend advised me to get up and take a cold shower-bath.  I did that also.  Within the hour, another friend assured me that it was policy to “feed a cold and starve a fever.”  I had both.  So I thought it best to fill myself up for the cold, and then keep dark and let the fever starve awhile.

In a case of, this kind, I seldom do things by halves; I ate pretty heartily; I conferred my custom upon a stranger who had just opened his restaurant that morning; he waited near me in respectful silence until I had finished feeding my cold, when he inquired if the people about Virginia City were much afflicted with colds?  I told him I thought they were.  He then went out and took in his sign.

I started down toward the office, and on the way encountered another bosom friend, who told me that a quart of salt-water, taken warm, would come as near curing a cold as anything in the world.  I hardly thought I had room for it, but I tried it anyhow.  The result was surprising.  I believed I had thrown up my immortal soul.

Now, as I am giving my experience only for the benefit of those who are troubled with the distemper I am writing about, I feel that they will see the propriety of my cautioning them against following such portions of it as proved inefficient with me, and acting upon this conviction, I warn them against warm salt-water.  It may be a good enough remedy, but I think it is too severe.  If I had another cold in the head, and there were no course left me but to take either an earthquake or a quart of warm saltwater, I would take my chances on the earthquake.

After the storm which had been raging in my stomach had subsided, and no more good Samaritans happening along, I went on borrowing handkerchiefs again and blowing them to atoms, as had been my custom in the early stages of my cold, until I came across a lady who had just arrived from over the plains, and who said she had lived in a part of the country where doctors were scarce, and had from necessity acquired considerable skill in the treatment of simple “family complaints.”  I knew she must have had much experience, for she appeared to be a hundred and fifty years old.