Kilda catching cold whenever strangers come. 'How
can there (said he) be a physical effect without a physical cause[762]?'
He added, laughing, 'the arrival of a ship full of strangers would kill
them; for, if one stranger gives them one cold, two strangers must give
them two colds; and so in proportion.' I wondered to hear him ridicule
this, as he had praised M'Aulay for putting it in his book: saying, that
it was manly in him to tell a fact, however strange, if he himself
believed it[763]. He said, the evidence was not adequate to the
improbability of the thing; that if a physician, rather disposed to be
incredulous, should go to St. Kilda, and report the fact, then he would
begin to look about him. They said, it was annually proved by M'Leod's
steward, on whose arrival all the inhabitants caught cold. He jocularly
remarked, 'the steward always comes to demand something from them; and
so they fall a coughing. I suppose the people in Sky all take a cold,
when--(naming a certain person[764]) comes.' They said, he came only in
summer. JOHNSON. 'That is out of tenderness to you. Bad weather and he,
at the same time, would be too much.'
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3.
Joseph reported that the wind was still against us. Dr. Johnson said, 'A
wind, or not a wind? that is the question[765];' for he can amuse
himself at times with a little play of words, or rather sentences.
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