About nine o'clock his friend Dave Torrence came in, and after
Uncle Peter had barked for him a couple of times Dave decided that
the trouble was information of the lungs and he suggested that
Uncle Peter should tie a rubber band around his chest and rub his
shoulder blades with gasolene.

Uncle Peter told his friend that he had no desire to become a human
automobile, so Dave got mad, kicked the piano on the shins and went
home.

An hour later Deacon Ed. Sprong, the Mayor's next-door neighbor,
came in and in ten minutes he had Uncle Peter making signs to an
undertaker.

Deacon Sprong decided that Uncle Peter had the galloping asthma
with compressed tonsilitis, and a touch of chillblainous croup on
the side, aggravated by asparagus on the chest.

Deacon Sprong told Uncle Peter to drink a pint of catnip tea, take
eight grains of quinine, rub the back of his neck with benzine,
soak his ankles in kerosene, take two grains of phenacetine, and
drink a hot whiskey toddy every half-hour before meals.

Deacon Sprong volunteered to run over every half-hour and help
Uncle Peter drink the toddy if it tasted bitter.

Then Deacon Sprong went home, and Uncle Peter's temperature came
down about ten degrees, while his respiration began to sit up and
notice things.