When I didn't have them in my wife was giving me Hail Columbia"
"Well, I got so I could wear those teeth and think of something else at the same time; and then I started for San Francisco to catch this ship. I can't understand it at all; but somehow or other, those teeth have shrunk. They began to shrink as soon as I struck the Pullman, and when I got aboard this ship the blamed things had shrunk some more. They got so they would drop on me while eating. I'd be going along all right, when all of a sudden, with a mouth-full of victuals, I'd find myself chewing those false teeth with my other teeth. I felt like a cannibal chewing a corpse. I felt like a ghoul robbing a graveyard. It was worse than the neck of a chicken, that any man who has kept house for twenty years or so, knows all about. After you've helped all the rest, all that's left for you is the neck, don't you know?"
"Missouri" had me crying; but I gave three emphatic and sympathetic nods. I've kept house for more than twenty years, and I'm a connoisseur myself on that part of the fowl—and the gizzard.
"Well," "Missouri" continued, "I felt like a Fiji Islander before the missionaries taught them to love their enemies, but not to eat them. So I'm wearing those teeth in my coat pocket.
"I may not look so young, but I don't feel so like a blithering savage. I hate to go home without a full set of teeth, though.
"How are the Japanese on dentistry, Mr. Allen? Do you suppose I could get fixed up over there?"
"With a mouthful of victuals, I'd find myself chewing those false teeth with my other teeth"
I told him I didn't know about their dentistry, but that they were clever little beggars. That they were strong on tea and tooth brushes.