Cobb's Anatomy

by Irvin S. Cobb

I knew a man once who was a gunsmith and lost all his teeth at a comparatively early age. He went along that way for years. He had to eschew the tenderloin for the reason that he couldn't chew it, and he had to cut out hickory nut cake and corn on the ear and such things. But there is nothing about the art of gunsmithing which seems to call for teeth, so he got along very well, living in a little house with the wife of his bosom and a faithful housedog named Ponto. But when he was past sixty he went and got himself some teeth from the dentist. He did this without saying anything about it at home; he was treasuring it up for a surprise. The corner stone was laid in May and the scaffolding was all up by July and in August the new teeth were dedicated with suitable ceremonies.

They altered his appearance materially. His nose and chin which had been on terms of intimacy now rubbed each other a last fond good-bye and his face lost that accordion-pleated look and straightened out and became about six or seven inches longer from top to bottom. He now had a sort of determined aspect like the iron jawed lady in a circus, whereas before his face had the appearance of being folded over and wadded down inside of his neck band, so his hat could rest comfortably on his collar. He knew he was altered, but he didn't realize how much he was altered until he went home that evening and walked proudly in the front gate. His wife who was timid about strangers, slammed the door right in his face and faithful Ponto came out from under the porch steps and bit him severely in the calf of the leg. There was only one consolation in it for him—for the first time in a long number of years he was in position to bite back.

And that's how it is with teeth—with your teeth let us say—for right here I'm going to drop the personal pronoun and speak of them as your teeth from now on. If anybody has to suffer it might as well be you and not me; I expect to be busy telling about it. As I started to say awhile ago, you—remember it's you from this point—you get your regular teeth and they start right in giving you trouble. Every little while one of them bursts from its cell with a horrible yell and in the lulls between pangs you go forth among men with the haunted look in your eye of one who is listening for the footfalls of a dread apparition, and one half of your head is puffed out of plumb as though you were engaged in the whimsical idea of holding an egg plant in the side of your jaw. A kind friend meets you, and, speaking with that high courage and that lofty spirit of sacrifice which a kind friend always exhibits when it's your tooth that is kicking up the rumpus and not his, he tells you you ought to have something done for it right away. You know that as well as he does, but you hate to have the subject brought up. It's your toothache anyhow. It originated with you. You are its proud parent but not so awfully proud at that. Mother and child doing as well as could be expected, but not expected to do very well.

But these friends of yours keep on shoving their free advice on you and the tooth keeps on getting worse and worse until the pain spreads all through the First Ward and finally you grab your resolution in both hands to keep it from leaking out between your fingers and you go to the dentist's.

This happens so many times that after awhile you lose count and so would the dentist, if he didn't write your name down every time in his little red book with pleasingly large amounts entered opposite to it. It seems to you that you are always doing something for your teeth? You have them pulled and pushed and shoved and filled and unfilled and refilled and excavated and blasted and sculptured and scroll-sawed and a lot of other things that you wouldn't think could be done legally without a building permit. As time passes on, the inside of your once well-tilled and commodious head becomes but little more than a recent site. Your vaults have been blown and most of your contents abstracted by Amalgam Mike and Dental Slim, the Demon Yeggmen of the Human Face. You are merely the scattered clews left behind for the authorities to work on; you are the faint traces of the fiendish crime. You are the point marked X.

But all along there is generally one tooth that has behaved herself like a lady. Other teeth may have betrayed your confidence but Old Faithful has hung on, attending to business, asking only for standing room and kind treatment. The others you may view with alarm, but to this tooth you can point with pride. But have a care—she is deceiving you.

Some night you go to bed and have a dream. In your dream it seems to you that a fox terrier is chasing a woodchuck around and around the inside of your head. In that tangled sort of fashion peculiar to dreams your sympathy seems to go out first to the fox terrier and then to the woodchuck as they circle about nimbly, leaping from your tonsils to your larynx and then up over the rafters in the roof of your mouth and down again and pattering over the sub-maxillary from side to side. But about then you wake up with a violent start and decide that any sympathy you may have in stock should be reserved for personal use exclusively, because at this moment the dog trees the woodchuck at the base of that cherished tooth of yours and starts to dig him out. He is a very determined dog and very active, but he needs a manicure. You are struck by that fact almost immediately.

Uttering some of those trite and commonplace remarks that are customary for use under such circumstances and yet are so futile to express one's real sentiments, you arise and undertake to pacify the infuriated creature with household remedies. You try to lure him away with a wad of medicated cotton stuck on the end of a parlor match. But arnica is evidently an acquired taste with him. He doesn't seem to care for it any more than you do. You begin to dress, using one hand to put your clothes on with and the other to hold the top of your head on. At this important juncture, the dog tears down the last remaining partitions and nails the woodchuck. The woodchuck is game—say what you will about the habits and customs of the woodchuck you have to hand it to him there—he's game as a lion. He fights back desperately. Intense excitement reigns throughout the vicinity. While the struggle wages you get your clothes on and wait for daylight to come, which it does in from eight to ten weeks. Norway is not the only place where the nights are six months long.

There is nobody waiting at the dentist's when you get there, it being early. You are willing to wait. At a barber shop it may be different but at a dentist's you are always willing to wait, like a gentleman. But the sinewy young man who is sitting in the front parlor reading the Hammer Thrower's Gazette, welcomes you with a false air of gaiety entirely out of keeping with the circumstances and invites you to step right in. He tells you that you are next. This is wrong—if you were next you would turn and flee like a deer. Not being next, you enter. Right from the start you seem to take a dislike to this young man. You catch him spitting in his hands and hitching his sleeves up as you are hanging up your hat. Besides he is too robust for a dentist. With those shoulders he ought to be a boiler maker or a safe mover or something of that sort. You resolve inwardly that next time you go to a dentist you are going to one of a more lady-like bearing and gentler demeanor. It seems a brutal thing that a big strong man should waste his years in a dental establishment when the world is clamoring for strong men to do the heavy lifting jobs. But before you can say anything, this muscular athlete has laid violent hands on your palpitating form and wadded it abruptly into the hideous embraces of a red plush chair, which looks something like the one they use up at Sing Sing, only it's done more quickly up there and with less suffering on the part of the condemned. On one side of you you behold quite a display of open plumbing and on the other side a tasty exhibit of small steel tools of assorted sizes. No matter which way your gaze may stray you'll be seeing something attractive.

You also take notice of an electric motor about large enough, you would say, to run a trolley car, which is purring nearby in a sinister and forbidding way. They are constantly making these little improvements in the dental profession. I have heard that fifty years ago a dentist traveled about over the country from place to place, sometimes pulling a tooth and sometimes breaking a colt. He practiced his art with an outfit consisting of two pairs of iron forceps—one pair being saber-toothed while the other pair was merely saw-fretted—and he gave a man the same kind of treatment he gave a horse, only he tied the horse's legs first. But now electricity is in general use and no dentist's establishment is complete without a dynamo attachment which makes a crooning sound when in operation and provides instrumental accompaniment to the song of the official canary.