“We have no use for such stuff. This is the tie we want,” and he pulled out an American tie of rather fine quality and the latest pattern.
I had to promise the head of the firm of B. Brothers to put him in touch with an American haberdasher’s journal, so that he may keep himself informed as to our styles.
Partly to test the influence of immigration in the remotest region of Hungary and partly to satisfy my craving for a certain kind of candy, I visited a little village hidden away in the Carpathians, where neither steam nor electricity has yet obtruded itself. There in a certain store, I bought my very first sweets, and although I have since tasted the delicacies of many civilizations, the lingering flavour of that first candy still seems the most delicious, and its taste has never left my palate. It was hard, highly coloured and usually exposed to flies and dust; but it was my first love, and my first pennies were sacrificed to it; so I was eager to revel in its delights again.
I went to that village in the spirit of one who goes on a pilgrimage, and as one seeks one’s favourite shrine so did I seek that little store. My palate’s memory led me to the very door; but in front of it, forcing itself upon my candy-hungry gaze, was a penny in the slot machine, out of which, in response to two Hungarian Filers, came dropping a stick of genuine American chewing-gum. It is needless to say that my primitive, highly-coloured candy was no more. In its place were caramels and buttercups very much like those I had left behind me in the United States.
Now I do not mean to imply that chewing-gum and caramels have any social or ethical bearing upon my subject; but they do prove that the old order changes and that the new has been brought in by the immigrant. Still within the sphere of the economic, yet having large ethical value, is the fact that the returned immigrant brings gold, not only in his pocket but in his teeth. I certainly never realized the far-reaching social and ethical value of the dentist until I saw the contrast between the returned immigrant, especially the contrast between his wife and daughter and the women who had remained at home.
If it ever was true that coarse fare makes strong teeth, it certainly has not been true during the period of my observations among the peasant people of Europe.
Where I know the bread to be coarsest and the fare simplest, as for instance in impoverished Montenegro, there the old, toothless hags are most numerous, and even the mouths of the young are disfigured by decaying teeth. This is especially true of the Alpine and Carpathian regions, out of which many of the Slavic immigrants come; there, a woman of forty is usually an old woman because she has no teeth. She is ugly in consequence, and therefore neglected by her husband.
The immigrant woman has discovered that gold in the teeth renews one’s youth, that it preserves one’s charms and is apt to keep lovers and husbands more loyal. Mistresses in America know how readily these foreign servants sacrifice their wages upon the dentist’s altar.
Not only does dentistry keep the women young and their lovers faithful, it keeps the men in good health, adds to their self-respect, and into regions hitherto untouched by their beneficent influence, it has introduced tooth-brushes and dentifrice.