FullReads

“Burn out the marrow of the tooth–’twill never trouble you again–I’ve cured hundreds that way! Don’t be afeared–you won’t feel it but a moment. Sit still, keep cool!” says Firelock.

“Cool?” with a hot wire in his tooth! But Bill, being already intensely crucified, and assured of Firelock’s skill, took his head out of the mush-plaster, opened his jaws, and Firelock, admonishing him to “keep cool,” crowded the hot, sizzling wire on to the tin foil jammed into the hollow by Wangbanger, and gave it a twist clear through the melted tin to the exposed nerve. Bill jumped, bit off the wire, burnt his tongue, and knocked Firelock nearly through the partition of his shop; and so frightened Monsieur Savon, the little barber next door, that he rushed out into the street, crying–

“Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! Ze zundair strike my shop!”

Bill was stone dead–Firelock crippled. The apothecary over the way came in, picked up poor Bill, applied some camphor to his nose, and brought him back to life, and–the pangs of tooth-ache!

“Kreasote!” says Squills, the ‘pothecary. “I’ll ease your pain, Mr. Whiffletree, in a second!”

Poor Bill gave up–the kreasote added a fresh invoice to his misery–burnt his already lacerated and roasted tongue–and he yelled right out.

“Death and glory! O-h-h-h-h, murder! You’ve pizened me!”

“Put a hot brick to that young man’s face,” said a stranger; “’twill take out the pain and swelling in three minutes!”

Bill revived; he seemed pleased at the stranger’s suggestion; the Brick was applied; but Bill’s cheek being now half raw with the various messes, it made him yell when the brick touched him!

He cleared for home, went to bed, and the excessive pain, finally, with laudanum, kreasote, fire, and hot bricks, put him to sleep.

He awoke at midnight, in a frightful state of misery; walked the floor until daylight; was tempted two or three times to jump out the window or crawl up the chimney!

Until noon next day he suffered, trying in vain, every ten minutes, some “known cure,” oils, acids, steam, poultices, and the ten thousand applications usually tried to cure a raging tooth.

Desperation made Bill revengeful. He got a club and went after Dr. Wangbanger, who had set all the village in a rage of tooth-ache. Ten or a dozen of his victims were at his door, awaiting ferociously their turns to be revenged.

But the bird had flown; the teuth-doctor had sloped; yet a good Samaritan came to poor Bill, and whispering in his ear, Bill started for Monsieur Savon’s barber-shop, took a seat, shut his eyes, and said his prayers. The little Frenchman took a keen knife and pair of pincers, and Bill giving one awful yell, the tooth was out, and his pains and perils at an end!