LIGHT LITERATURE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 38, 21 August 1880, Page 4

LIGHT LITERATURE.

ABOUT TOOTH-PULLING.

An oil city man was standing in front of a dentist's office recently, with an anxious unhappy look in his eyes, and two yards of flannel round his lower jaw. He cast sorrowful glances upwards to the dentist's sign, and in a hesitating sort of way placed his foot on the lower stair ; then came out to the street again as if he had forgotten something. Colonel Solon came along at that moment, and with a thoughtful interest in the man's welfare said — " Toothache, eh ? Goin' to have it pulled ? Ever had a tooth pulled? No? Well, you'd better go right up afore your courage fails you. Worst thing in the world is pullin' a tooth. I've been through the war, had both lungs shot away, fifteen bullets in my head, and doctors run a probe through a hole in my shoulder right down through my body to my toe — thought 'twould kill me. But man alive, I never knew what pain was till I had a tooth pulled. Maybe you think the toothache is horrible. It is. It's awful ! But wait till the dentist runs them air iron tongs in your mouth, pushes the tooth right down through your jaw-bone, and then yanks away as if he was pulling on an old hand-engine, and yer'll think, the toothache ain't no more to be compared to it than a flea bite is to a railway accident. Ter had better go right up though, and have it out. Don't let anything I said cause yer to back out. I merely wanted to prepare yer mind for it. An' don't yer take ether. Knew a man oncet, about your complexion an' build, who took ether, an' he died. It's dangerous. Jest go right up an' have it out. I'll go up with yer, and see how yer stand it when he begins twistin' the bones round. Ter won't sleep a wink tonight if yer don't have it out; an' maybe yer won't anyhow, for sometimes the tooth breaks the jaw, inflammatory rheumatism strikes the whats-its-name nerve, and the what-do-they-eall-it sets in." Just at this moment, a young man practising on a French horn in one of the upper rooms, blew a long, ear-piercing blast, like the yell of a man in torment, and as the last sound echoed through the hall, the colonel said, " That's it, there's some one gettin' a tooth pulled

now, an' the dentist hasn't any more tfuin given the Rrsb bwisb either. Come right up an' have yours yanked. Whoop! there he goes again!" as another terrible blast from the horn came down the staircase. " Hold on, hold on !" yelled the colonel — but he wasn't quick enough to stop the man with the aching tooth, who rushed out of the doorway and down the street so fast that his two yards of flannel became unwound and streamed behind him like signals of danger — while the villainous old colonel sat down on the lower step and laughed till his eyes ached.