Смешные рассказы / The Funny Stories

My friend took all his baggage with him, consisting of two excellent silk handkerchiefs and his grandmother.

I had my regular gin and onions along.

We sailed and hunted and fished and danced all day, and I treated my cough all night.

But my disease continued to grow worse. A sheet-bath was recommended. I had never refused a remedy yet, and it seemed poor policy[2 - poor policy – зд. плохое решение] to start then.

It was done at midnight, and the weather was very frosty.

When the chilly rag touches one’s warm flesh, it makes him feel sudden violence and gasp for breath just as men do in the death agony. It stopped the beating of my heart. I thought my time had come.

Never take a sheet-bath – never.

When the sheet-bath failed to cure my cough, a lady friend recommended the application of a mustard plaster to my breast.

I believe that would have cured me, if it had not been for young Wilson.[3 - I believe that would have cured me, if it had not been for young Wilson. – Думаю, меня бы это вылечило, если бы не мой друг Уилсон.]

When I went to bed, I put my mustard plaster – which was an eighteen-inch square – where I could reach it when I was ready for it.

But young Wilson got hungry at night, and ate it up.

I never saw anybody have such an appetite; I am confident that he would have eaten me if I had been healthy.

After a week at Lake Bigler, I went to Steamboat Springs, and besides the steam baths, I took a lot of the worst medicines ever created. They would have cured me, but I had to go back to Virginia, where, in spite of the variety of new remedies I took every day, I managed to aggravate my disease.

I finally went to San Francisco, and the first day I got here one lady told me to drink a quart of whisky every twenty-four hours, and a friend recommended precisely the same.

Each advised me to take a quart – that makes half a gallon. I plan to do it or perish in the attempt.

Now, with the kindest motives in the world, I offer for the consideration of patients the course of treatment I have lately gone through. Let them try it – if it doesn’t cure them, it can’t more than kill them.