Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/212

No ordeal in life so terrifies me as visit to the dentist.

I do not claim any originality for this feeling. Most persons have it and writers for the Comic Press have flourished on it for years. I merely state it here not as a joke but as a fact, because everything that follows depends upon it. I wish to say also that, though everyone's teeth are more sensitive than anyone else's, my teeth are more sensitive still. The slightest touch of metal upon then plunges me into agony.

So much being premised, I pass on to the tragic circumstance of a compulsory visit to the dentist last week after two or three days of pain. The appointment hung over me like a———well, you know what it is like, and I went through all the usual preliminary stages, only in my case they were more distressing. The whole point of this truthful history is to show by what means I in the end conquered the flesh.

I reached the door, suddenly and totally (as usual) free from pain, and, overcoming the impulse to retreat, pressed the bell with a reluctant and trembling finger. The usual gigantic footman opened the door—a man with thirty-two of the soundest teeth in Europe, and therefore the least sympathetic sight to the eyes at this moment. Why my dentist keeps such a servant I cannot imagine. And yet, on the other hand, one would not choose as janitor a poor creature with a swollen cheek or his head in a bandage. I cannot say what the perfect dentist's footman should be like—I have no time to bother about it just now—but I am sure he ought not to be so healthy and happy-looking as this fellow. He relieved me of my coat and hat and showed me into the waiting-room where all the illustrated papers of a month or two ago are to be seen, provided you can find them among the heaps of yesteryear's.

I was punctual, because that is my invariable habit. My dentist was late, because that is his. It is indeed all dentists' invariable habit. What, I always wonder, do they suppose we should think of them if they were on time? That they were not busy, probably; for that seems to be the darkest disgrace that the professional mind can imagine. They pull out the wrong tooth without any compunction and consider a light apology obliterates the fault, but the thought that someone might not think them overworked breaks their hearts.

He was so late on this occasion that I had time to look through a score of papers and lose myself in the pictures of the War. Illustrated papers being not much in my line, I was peculiarly interested in these, and the privations and triumphs, the heroisms and sacrifices of the great struggle took on a new vividness, and more than ever I wished myself younger so that I too might join in the fray.

I was in the midst of these reflections when the giant footman entered with the dread summons, and I returned with a jolt to my drab pacific existence once more, and faltered behind him up the stairs with a beating heart. Absurd to be so cowardly, and yet there it is.

My dentist greeted me with his usual loathsome cheerfulness, although I cannot say that I really want him solemnly to assume the black cap as one enters; and he prepared the fatal chair and rattled among his weapons with all his customary gaiety. I thought, again of Sir Kenelm Digby's fable, and "What's fun to you is death to me," I murmured to myself as I took up position and opened my mouth. And as I did so I was only too conscious that I was shaking; not purely from fear but because two nights of toothache make one a jelly.

The examination began...

Now, at last, comes the point of this tedious narrative.

"Well," said the dentist, "you're in a pretty bad way, I can tell you. Why they've been going so quickly of late I can't say, but you want patching up in all directions. Two of the nerves are quite exposed." (My heart fell three or four inches with a thud.) "It will be a long and rather uncomfortable job, I'm afraid." (It fell again, for I know only too well what horrors are contained in the word "uncomfortable" as used by a dentist.) "All I can do to-day," he added, "is to drill two or three of the worst of them."

I sat up. Drill! Had I heard him aright?

"Did you say drill?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied. "Two or three must be drilled at once."

My fears suddenly left me. I grew firm and resolute, careless of pain; for I too, after all, was to be in the military movement. At least my teeth were.

When he started.

After a few weeks of it.

The result.

This seems rather a crude way of referring to the enemy's preference for a liberal dict.