Australian Tales - Setis

Influenza Season.
Scene: Sydney, King Street corner, on a drizzling day. Two friends
(Minton and Timmins) meet, and shake hands; they are both suffering
from the prevailing epedemic.
Minton: Good bording, Bister Tibbids! How are you? I thought you
were off to Boretod Bay — ha teez — ha teez! (sneezes.)
Timmins: How are you, Bidtod? Dasty bordid, this. I've bid laid up with
this confounded influedsa, ad bissed the steaber. How is Bissis Bidtod,
and Biss Baria? ha teezer? ha teez? (sneezes violently.)
Minton: They are all very bad at hobe. By-the-bye, Tibbids, what
rebedy do you use for this epedebic?
Timmins: Why, by bedical bad gave be sobe dasty bixture; I dod't dow
what it is bade of, but I think it has dode be good. Whighezm! ha
teezum! (sneezes hysterically.)
Minton: You bust have bid precious bad, thed, if the bedicine has dode
you ady good at all; for you — pardod me — you look just dow like a
frost-bitted ghost. But dod't stadd there id the raid, Tibbids. Cobe with be
to the Betropolitad Hotel, add have a basid of buttod broth.
* * * * *
If the above brief colloquy has the least resemblance to a joke, it is a
very grim one, and thousands of folks in Sydney will confess that the
influenza is as foreign to fun as a fly in your eye, or a splinter up your
thumb-nail. Its peculiar effect upon the powers of speech of its victims is
well understood, though that is the least distressing symptom of the
malady, which oppresses both body and mind in a manner which no pen
in the world could describe.
I was recently in company with a gentleman, whose brain contains
perhaps as extensive a variety of lore as any cranium in the land, and
while trying to indite an ordinary letter, he passed his hand across his
capacious brow, and confessed “that he had the greatest difficulty in
drawing a single rational idea from his bemuddled organs.” While
afterwards reflecting on that admission of a great mind, I was constrained
to sympathise with all those persons whose professions demand the
constant exercise of their intellect; and as I did so I wondered how far
that fellow-feeling was general. How many readers of the morning