Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1894 — A TROUBLESOME TOOTH. [ARTICLE]

A TROUBLESOME TOOTH.

BY JAMES BUCKHAM.

“I declare, Josi’, ’f your head keeps on gettin’ much bigger you’ll hev to wear a peck measure ’stead of a hat!” Mrs. Tottenham turned from the sink, where she was peeling potatoes, and looked pityingly at her husband. Josiah sat near the kitohen stove, holding his head sidewise to the heat, with a most dolorous expression on his swollen face. “Why don’t y’ go and hev it hauled?" continued Mrs. Tottenham, as Josiah sat groaning and swaying in the old calicocushioned rocking chair. “Seems to me ’f I was a man I wouldn’t set and suffer as you be 'f there was a pair o’ pinchers and a doctor anywhere within ten miles. Sakes alive! how you be a squirmin’! Hev it out, I say. Hsin’t y’ got the curridge?” Josiah Tottenham looked up piteously, liis long, lank tody in the roCKing-chair until Ins stiff and swollen face squarely fronted ljjs wife. “I daresn't I 1 ’ he groauecl. “Lord! it jumps wus’n a grasshopper ev’ry time I think on’t. I couldn’t bear to hav no pinchers jscrtyicbed into them tender gums. Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Ugh-h-h-h!” With a long, sighing groan Josiah Tottenham drooped over the stove and stared blankly at the teakettle before him. Mrs. Tottenham stood in perplexed thought for a moment. Then a definite line of argument seemed to suggest itself to her, and she broke out, with apparent irrelevancy; “Josi’, do you remember the time you cut the Durham bull’s tail?” Josiah groaned affirmatively. “How he started off an the jump V snaked v’ all round the barnyard, V slewed y’ int' the fence V dragged y’ on yer back, but y’ never let go—just hung on like a plarster—V finally got yer knife to the right spot V sliced the critter’s tail jest where y’ wanted to?” Fora moment Josiah forgot his troublesome tooth under the spell of his wife’s vivid narration of a well-remembered triumph. He even attempted to smile, but the twinge of pain that shot through his nerves brought him back to the doleful present and he groaned aloud. “I sez to myself that day,” continued Mrs. Tottenham, diplomatically, “there’s mighty few men c’n compare with Josi’ Tottenham for pure grit.” She turned to the pan of potatoes and worked in silence for a minute, then resumed: “’Member the time y’ kotched a tramp asleep in the lower barn last spring ’n’ hauled him out by the coat an’ ducked him in the trough (” Josiah nodded. It was pleasant to be entertained with reminiscences of one’s personal prowess, even though the pleasure were punctuated with twinges of toothache. “Y’ know I sez to you then,” continued Mrs. Tottenham, “that I reckoned you wuz cut out f’r a soldier ’r some outdoor employment requirin’ bravery?”

Mr. Tottenham grunted complacently. "But the best of all,” exolaimed his wife, with triumphant climacteric fervor, “wuz when the old mare kicked yer in the stall and broke yer leg, an’ y’ jest hopped around and hitched her up an’ druv f’r yer own doctor without sayin’ a word to nobody. I call that genooine hee-roism, nowl” Josiah’s eyes glowed. He began to realize that he really was a man of uncommon fortitude, and he innocently and unsuspectingly rejoiced in the thought. Being neither logician nor diplomat, he did not see the point at which the wife was driving; and when she finally turned upon him, exclaiming, “Josi’, es I wuz such a man as you be I’d feel ashamed to knuckle down to a leetle snub of a tooth!” he was too astonished and bewildered to reply. The situation did seem ridiculous; he was obliged to admit that. But, oh! those fiendish, cold, cruel, crunching "pinchers!” Suddenly a compromise occurred to him. “Why couldn’t you pull it, Marthy?" he asked. "I seen you pull one of Ebcn’s teeth, onct, with a string.” "P’raps I could!” cried Mrs. Tottenham, whirling with readiness that made Josiah start. “Lemrae hev a look in your mouth, Josi’.” The oddly assorted couple went to the window—Josiah six feet four in his stockings, and Martha four feet six in hers. Martha Tottenham was the smallest woman in Willowtown and Josiah Tottenham was the largest man. Josiah sat down in a chair facing the window and opened his mouth as widely as he could under the circumstances. His wife looked into the dark cavity with the , compressed lips and frowning brow of one whose attention is taxed to the utmost. “There’s two or three angry lookin’ones, Josi’,” she said. "Which o’ ’em do you s’pose ’tis?” "The for’ard one o’ the lot. I cal’late,” replied Josiah. "The pain seems to kinder creep that way.” "Wal, now you jest set right where you be till I get a string,” said Mrs. Tottenham, moving away briskly toward the pantry. Josiah’s hands, gripping the chair-back, as he sat facing it, were bloodless with the intensity of his grasp. Eben, the eldest boy, had come in from the barn and stood stupidly stari iag at his father. "Coin’ to have it hauled?” he asked in an awestruck tone. His father nodded convalsively, looking straight out of the window up into the sky, his head tilted back and his mouth open in antioipatory agony. Mrs. Tottenham came out of the pintry with • piece of fine braided silk

I fishline in her hand. It was smaM, bit exceedingly strong and elastic. She stood over Josiah and made a “slipnoose” at the end of the string yrith tnt deft thumb and finger of a practical needlewoman. As she twirled the knot into shape Josiah winced. “Open yonr mouth wider, Josi’,” said his wife, firmly. Josiah made a painful attempt to comply. The muscles of hi» lips twitched and his eyes bnlged out as if he were being choked. A horrible fascination drew Eben closer to the ohair of torture. The boy was suffering almost aa keenly as his father, yet he could not go away. Mrs. Tottenham coolly dropped the silk loop around Josiah’! “for’ard” tooth and drew it tight. Josiah’s groan would have melted a March icicle, but it did not unnerve the determined little woman at his side. Bracing herself with one foot on the round ol the chair, she gave a sudden, swift and sleudy pull. For a moment Josiah’s big frame seemed about to rise and float away through the open window. Then the tooth came flying out; Mrs. Tottenham staggered backward and Joaiah settled dowß into his chair, a limp, bewildered, groaning, tortured mnss of outraged nerves. With a frightened cry, like that of a b'rd released from the spell of a serpent’s eye, the boy who had been watching the operation fled from the room.

A few minutea later Mrs. Tottenham came out into the barn with the tooth in her hand. “I want you to get rid of it, Eben, she said, with some agitation; “anyhow so's I shan’t know what you done with it. I don’t want yer father to ever see it. It’s a perfectly sound tooth—the only sound tooth he had in his head, I reckon! But don’t you ever say a word about that—mind, now.” It was a wonderful relief to the little woman that evening to see her husband’s face gradually shrinkiug to its normal proprotions nnd to hear his grateful acknowledgments of her skill and nerve as a dentist. “Is the pain entirely gone, Josi’?” she asked, as they were going to bed. “Every speck!” responded Mr. Tottenham. gleefully. “Goodness me?” mused the little woman smilingly, as she crawled under the blankets. “I’ve beern tell a good ’eal ’bout the power of the imagination, but 1 never s’posed it could straighten out the kind o’ mistake I made to-day!" “What you laughing’ ’bout, Marthy?" demanded Josiah, sleepily. “Oh, nothin’,” replied his wife. “I was jest wonderin’ what makes toothache, anyway.”—[Once a Week.