University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

The same afternoon, Dr. — was in his
handsomely furnished reception room, leaning
back in his arm chair, with a Regalia
cigar in his lips, which he was idly indulging,
for he had just dined. With the last Lady's
Book in his fingers, he was, at the same time,
listlessly looking at the print of fashions, and
wondering (for he was a bachelor) how many
enamelled teeth he must set in a year to keep
a wife in fashionable dresses, if he should
run the risk of taking one, when a carriage
suddenly drew up at his door, steps were let
down, and the next instant his bell was rung
with an emphasis that made him start. He
looked through his blinds.

`Ladies! and at this hour! The room is
filled with tobacco smoke. 'Tis Percy Wharton
and his beautiful wife, (I would give an
eagle a piece for her teeth) aad her brother,
Mr. Francis Astley, who I know makes a
practice of smoking in her drawing-room.
She is therefore used to it. I will make no
apologies.'

The party entered the dentist's room, and
were received by him with professional
courtesy. Mrs. Wharton was pale, and a
cambric ksrchief covered her beautiful—alas!
no longer beautiful—mouth!

`You smoke cigars, Doctor,' said young
Astley. `I will trouble you.'

`With the greatest pleasure in the world,
sir,' answered the Doctor, giving him his
cigar case; `but I should apologize to Mrs.
Wharton for smoking in my receiving-room;
but not expecting ladies at this late hour—'

`I have come Dr. — to ask you if you
can restore my teeth,' said Mrs. Wharton,
interrupting him, and removing her kerchief
from her mouth.

`Your teeth, madam!'

`I have lost four by a fall from my horse.'

`Those beautiful teeth! permit me to look,
madam.'

The Doctor held up both hands in unfeign
ed astonishment and commiseration, for, like
a professional architect gazing with pain upon
a scene of architectural ruins, the restoration
of which would be his gain, he contemplated
the devastation of the even rows of snowy
teeth he had before admired, with sorrow,
notwithstanding his imagination filled up the
gap with guineas

`Indeed, madam, it is the world's pity!
he said, shaking his head.

`Can you do nothing for me?' she asked,
watching his countenance with sinking heart.

`Nature, madam, is the best dentist. I
can never match the pearly transparency of
the remaining teeth. Two upper and two
lower, and directly in front! Oh, what a
misfortune. Two incisors—two cuspids
What a sad misfortune!'

`You must remedy it, Doctor.'

`Never saw so fine a set of teeth in my
life! Would have given a sovereign a
piece for them!' soliloquized the dentist.
`Have you the teeth, madam?'

`Here they are Doctor,' said Astley, taking
them from his silk purse.

`Beautiful! Incomparable!' exclaimed the
dentist, looking at them with the eye of a
connoissieur.

`Can you replace them, Doctor?' she asked,
faintly.

`Worth a guinea each. What translucent
enamel! a manufacture of such would make
my fortune!'

`Doctor!' exclaimed Mrs. Wharton, with
petulant impatience, seeing he paid no attention
to her.

`I beg pardon madam.'

`Can you replace my teeth?'

`No, madam.'

`Can you match them?'

`I will give you five guineas a-piece to do
it,' said Percy Wharton.

`There is but one way,' said the dentist,
with hesitation.

`Name it—it shall be done at my sacrifice.'

`By extracting teeth from another's jaw
and placing them with the nerve still warm
in the cavities of your own.'

`Oh, horrid!' exclaimed Emily Wharton,
with a shudder.

`Will any human being submit to such a

sacrifice?' asked Francis Astley, with surprise.

`If paid for it. I have thrice performed
this operation since I have been in practice.'

`Who were the victims?' asked Astley,
with surprise.

`Those who have the most beautiful teeth
in the world?' answered the dentist, with a
smile.

`You don't mean'—

`I do mean your negresses.'

`Hear this Emma?' said Frank, with a
mischievous smile.

`The idea is absolutely disgusting!' answered
Percy, with a corresponding contortion
of the lips.

`I had rather go without teeth,' said Mrs.
Wharton.

`You will have to put up with the ordering
false teeth, Emma,' observed her husband.

`Can you match my own?'

`With difficulty, they are so brilliant.'

`Try, Doctor,' said Percy, `and if you succeed
you shall be well paid.'

`If Mrs Wharton will do me the honor to
call to-morrow, at twelve, I will then have a
set that I think will suit her so far as false
teeth will compensate for natural ones—especially
such as she has lost.'

`Doctor, don't speak of them, I beg of you.
I will call to-morrow,' said Mrs. Wharton,
preparing to go.

`You will not think, then, of the other proposition
I suggested'—

`No, sir,' replied Percy Wharton, with indignation.

The door closed—the carriage rolled away
—and the dentist was left alone.

`How prejudiced are some people!' he
ejaculated, as the sounds of the wheels died
away. `There is many a mulattress with
the finest teeth imaginable—scarcely as
beautiful as these, indeed—that would lose
them for a guinea each. 'Tis rather shocking
to a young husband's taste, to have his
wife's mouth filled wiih an African girl's
teeth, to be sure! But there is no help for it
if he would have her mouth restored!'

Thus soliloquized Dr. —; and falling
asleep in his arm chair, with the four teeth
he had been admiring held in the open palm
of his hand, he dreamed that a sudden cloud
came up, and that amid thunder and lightning
a storm of hail descended, breaking in
every pane of his glass, and covering his
floors with glittering hail-stones, which, as
they fell, he saw to his surprise, instead of
being ice, were the most beautiful teeth—
incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and molars—
which for whiteness, symmetry, transparency
and polish, far surpassed any thing of the kind
he had ever seen,

`Now will I supply Mrs. Wharton's loss
and rival nature!' he exclaimed, as a clap
of thunder shook his apartments and awakened
him to the consciousness that a smart
shower was pattering against his windows.

`My teeth are all rain-water! Poor Mrs.
Wharton will have to wait for these big drops
of rain to crystalize. There is my bell. I
thought I heard it when I was asleep.
Where is that confounded boy Pete, that is
ever out of the way when he is wanted!'

Thus speaking, the Doctor rose from his
arm-chair and opened his door to a servant
in livery, with a dripping umbrella in his
hand, who leaving a note with him, hastily
departed. It read thus:

`If Doctor — knows of a young healthy
white person, with a fine set of teeth that
will match hers, and who for a sufficient remuneration
is willing to sacrifice them and
substitute a set of false ones for them, Mrs.
Wharton will consent to the arrangement,
though greatly against her proper feeling.
Mrs. W. will pay the person not only five
guineas each, but provide, at her own expense,
a set of your best false teeth for her.
Your own remuneration for effecting this
will be whatever you fix it at. Mrs. W.
will call at 12, as requested.

`No. — Girard Place. 5 o'clock. P.M.

`This Mrs. Wharton is a sensible woman.
If her note is not written without her husband's
knowledge. I have no skill in detecting
mystery in female handwriting. A young
healthy person, with a fine set of teeth.—
Hum! It were a difficult matter to find a
counterpart to these four teeth in the incisors
or cuspids of any `young healthy person' of
my acquaintance. I know every good set of
teeth in the city. Not one like hers, though,

and of that peculiar transparent enamel! It's
a bad job. I will advertise!'

Thus determining, the dentist sat down to
his escrutoire and wrote this advertisement
for the morning paper:

`A young woman, from sixteen to eighteen
years of age, who has a fine set of teeth, and
who is willing for a valuable consideration to
part with four of the front ones, will please
call at the office of Dr. —, dentist, No.
— — Row, to-day, between 12 and 1
o'clock.'

`I think that will do. 'Tis an odd advertisement,
but it's nobody's business! It shall
go in. There's doubtless many a one of the
pretty shop girls I have seen smiling and displaying
teeth that would make a dentist's
fortune, would be glad, for a hundred silver
dollars, to lose every tooth they have in their
heads. Here Pete, you scoundrel, you!
You come in now that the rain drives you in
doors! Take this advertisement to the
Daily Chronicle office, and tell the editor it
most be inserted in to-morrow's morning's
paper. Do you hear, Pete?'

`Yeth, thir,' lisped the little negro in reply.

`Then scamper, and if you are not back
in twenty minutes I'll draw every tooth out
of your head.'

`Yeth, thir,' answered the urchin, disappearing
through the door; while the easy
tempered dentist, looking after him with a
smile, gave himself up to conjectures upon
the probable issue of his advertisement.