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But in any event we get them all and no sooner do we get them than we begin to lose them. They develop cavities and aches and extra roots and we spend a good part of our lives and most of our substance with the dentist. Nevertheless, in spite of all we can do and all he can do, we keep on losing them. And after awhile, they are all gone and our face folds up on us like a crush hat or a concertina and from our brow to our chin we don’t look much more than a third as long as we used to look. We dislike this folded-up appearance naturally–who wouldn’t? And we get tired of living on spoon victuals and the memory of past beef-steaks. So we go and get some false ones made. They have to be made to order; there appears to be no market for custom made teeth; you never see any hand-me-down teeth advertised, guaranteed to fit any face and withstand a damp climate. Getting them made to order is a long and unhappy process and I will pass over it briefly. Having got them, we find that they do not fit us or that we do not fit them, which comes to the same thing. The dentist makes them fit by altering us some and the teeth some, and after some months they quit feeling as though they didn’t belong to us but had been borrowed temporarily from somebody’s loan collection of ceramics.

But just about the time they are becoming acclimated and we are getting used to them, the interior of our mouth for private reasons best known to itself changes around materially and we either have to go back and start all over and go through the whole thing again, or else haply we die and pass on to the bourne from which no traveller returneth either with his teeth or without them. If Shakespeare had only thought of it–and he did think of a number of things from time to time–he might have divided his Seven Ages of Man much better by making them the Seven Ages of Teeth as follows: First age–no tooth; second age–milk teeth; third age–losing ’em; fourth age–getting more teeth; fifth age–losing ’em; sixth age–getting false teeth and finding they aren’t satisfactory; seventh age–toothless again.

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.