The butler, John Binns, who is an old and faithful retainer to this
household, is now suffering from his annual cough. It is a terrific
cough, capable of disputing supremacy with all other coughs of which
the world has heard. The special points about this cough are (1) its
loudness; (2) its combination of the noises made by all other
coughs; (3) its depth; (4) its shriek of despair as it trembles
and reverberates through the house; (5) its capacity to repel and
annihilate sympathy. It is true that I have interviewed Binns with
regard to his cough--it is an annual interview and is expected of me.
I have urged him as he values our friendship not to neglect his cough,
and he has assured me in return that the doctor has prepared for him a
draught which possesses the supreme quality of being absolutely unable
to effect the purpose for which it was devised.
"I shall drink 'is stuff," says Binns, "but I 'aven't any 'opes of its
doing me any good. It doesn't seem to get me _be'ind_ the eough. If
once I could really get be'ind it I should soon finish it. But yon
can't expect to do anything with a cough unless you're be'ind it."
"Have you tried chloraline?" I venture to suggest, mentioning not by
that name, but by another, a much-advertised specific.
"I've been living on chloraline--that is when I wasn't taking camphor
lozenges. But my symptoms are too strong for that kind o' stuff.
Besides, I find that it's no use to fill yerself up with remedies,
because they only weigh down the cough unnaturally, and then when it
does bust out it's fit to tear yer throat in pieces. But none of them
get be'ind it--no, not once."
It will be observed that Binns has almost a superstition in regard to
"getting be'ind." If he got rid of his cough with everything still in
front, he would take no satisfaction whatever in his malady; but as
it is he feels a legitimate pride in it. He has been a member of this
household for forty years, and punctually on the Kalends of March in
every year his cough turns up. It never reduces his efficiency, but,
while it alienates affection, it makes him more valuable to himself as
being one who has symptoms capable of being related at full length
to Mrs. Hankinson, the cook, or to any of the maids who have not
yet experienced it and must be made aware that they belong to an
establishment which has the high merit of accommodating John Binns's
annual cough.
It is something to have a butler who has coughed his irresistible
way through two-and-a-half generations. It is a perfectly harmless
affliction, but it gets on nerves in the same way as it did when first
it huicked and honked and strangled and choked in the seventies of
last century. I can see no decrease in its vigour or its variety. It
deserves the chance of immortality that I hereby offer it, thus giving
it a place beside the cough that _Johnson_ coughed at _Dr. Blimber's_
famous establishment. It will be remembered that, when the _Doctor_
began an excursus on the Romans, _Johnson_, "who happened to be
drinking and who caught the Doctor's eye glaring at him through the
side of his tumbler, left off so hastily that he was convulsed for
some moments and in the sequel ruined Dr. Blimber's point." He
struggled gallantly, but had in the end to give way to an overwhelming
paroxysm of coughing. It was a good cough, but an isolated one, and
was perhaps, after all, not equal to Binns's.
* * * * *