_CERTAIN DENTAL EXPERIENCES.--AN UNFORTUNATE OFFICIAL_.
Mr. Potts has suffered a good deal from the toothache, and one day
he went around to the office of Dr. Slugg, the dentist, to have the
offending tooth pulled. The doctor has a very large practice; and in
order to economize his strength, he invented a machine for pulling
teeth. He constructed a series of cranks and levers fixed to a movable
stand and operating a pair of forceps by means of a leather belt,
which was connected with the shafting of a machine-shop in the street
back of the house. The doctor experimented with it several times on
nails firmly inserted in a board, and it worked splendidly. The first
patient he tried it on was Mr. Potts. When the forceps had been
clasped upon Potts' tooth, Dr. Slugg geared the machine and opened the
valve. It was never known with any degree of exactness whether the
doctor pulled the valve too far open or whether the engine was working
at that moment under extraordinary pressure. But in the twinkling of
an eye Mr. Potts was twisted out of the chair and the movable stand
began to execute the most surprising manoeuvres around the room.
It would jerk Mr. Potts high into the air and souse him down in
an appalling manner, with one leg among Slugg's gouges and other
instruments of torture, and with the other in the spittoon. Then it
would rear him up against the chandelier three or four times, and
shy across and drive Potts' head through the oil portrait of Slugg's
father over the mantel-piece. After bumping him against Slugg's
ancestor it would swirl Potts around among the crockery on the
wash-stand and dance him up and down in an exciting manner over the
stove, until finally the molar "gave," and as Potts landed with his
foot through the pier-glass and his elbow on a pink poodle worked in a
green rug, the machine dashed violently against Dr. Slugg and tried
to seize his leg with the forceps. When they carried Potts home, he
discovered that Slugg had pulled the wrong tooth; and Dr. Slugg never
sent to collect his bill. He canceled his contract with the man who
owned the planing-mill, and began to pull teeth in the old way, by
hand. I have an impression that Slugg's patent can be bought at a
sacrifice.
[Illustration: DR. SLUGG'S INVENTION]
Mr. Potts, a day or two later, resolved to take the aching tooth out
himself. He had heard that a tooth could be removed suddenly and
without much pain by tying a string around it, fixing the string to
a bullet and firing the bullet from a gun. So he got some string and
fastened it to the tooth and to a ball, rammed the latter into his
gun, and aimed the gun out of the window. Then he began to feel
nervous about it, and he cocked and uncocked the gun about twenty
times, as his mind changed in regard to the operation. The last time
the gun was cocked he resolved _not_ to take the tooth out in that
way, and he began to let the hammer down preparatory to cutting the
string. Just then the hammer slipped, and the next minute Mr. Potts'
tooth was flying through the air at the rate of fifty miles a minute,
and he was rolling over on the floor howling and spitting blood. After
Mrs. Potts had picked him up and given him water with which to wash
out his mouth he went down to the front window. While he was sitting
there thinking that maybe it was all for the best, he saw some men
coming by carrying a body on a shutter. He asked what was the matter,
and they told him that Bill Dingus had been murdered by somebody.
Mr. Potts thought he would put on his hat and go down to the coroner's
office and see what the tragedy was. When he got there, Mr. Dingus
had revived somewhat, and he told his story to the coroner. He was
trimming a tree in Butterwick's garden, when he suddenly heard the
explosion of a gun, and the next minute a bullet struck him in the
thigh and he fell to the ground. He said he couldn't imagine who did
it. Then the doctor examined the wound and found a string hanging from
it, and a large bullet suspended upon the string. When he pulled the
string it would not move any, and he said it must be tied to
some other missile still in the flesh. He said it was the most
extraordinary case on record. The medical books reported nothing of
the kind.
Then the doctor gave Mr. Dingus chloroform and proceeded to cut into
him with a knife to find the other end of the string, and while he was
at work Mr. Potts began to feel sick at his stomach and to experience
a desire to go home. At last the doctor cut deep enough; and giving
the string a jerk, out came a molar tooth that looked as if it
might have been aching. Then the doctor said the case was 'more
extraordinary than he had thought it was. He said that tooth couldn't
have been fired from a gun, because it would have been broken to
pieces; it couldn't have been swallowed by Dingus and then broken
through and buried itself in his thigh, for then how could the string
and ball be accounted for?
"The occurrence is totally unaccountable upon any reasonable theory,"
said the doctor, "and I do not know what to believe, unless we are to
conceive that the tooth and the ball were really meteoric stones that
have assumed these remarkable shapes and been shot down upon the earth
with such force as to penetrate Mr. Dingus' leg, and this is so very
improbable that we can hardly accept it unless it is impossible to
find any other. Hallo! What's the matter with you, Potts? Your mouth
and shirt are all stained with blood!"
"Oh, nothing," said Potts, forgetting himself. "I just lost a tooth,
and--"
"You lost a--Who pulled it?" asked the doctor.
"Gentlemen," said Potts, "the fact is I shot it out with my gun."
Then they put Potts under bail for attempted assassination, and Dingus
said that as soon as he got well he would bang Mr. Potts with a club.
When the crowd had gone, the coroner said to Potts,
"You're a mean sort of a man, now, ain't you?"
"Well, Mr. Maginn," replied Potts, "I really didn't know Mr. Dingus
was there; and the gun went off accidentally, any way."
"Oh, it isn't that," said the coroner--"it isn't that. I don't mind
your shooting him, but why in the thunder didn't you kill him while
you were at it, and give me a chance? You want to see me starve, don't
you? I wish you'd a buried the tooth in his lung and the ball in his
liver, and then I'd a had my regular fees. But as it is, I have all
the bother and get nothing. I'd starve to death if all men were like
you."
And Potts went away with a dim impression that he had injured Maginn
rather more than Mr. Dingus.
* * * * *
Coroner Maginn's condition, however, is one of chronic discontent.
Upon the occasion of a recent encounter with him I said to him,
"Business seems to be dull to-day, Mr. Maginn."
"Dull! Well, that's just no name for it. This is the deadest town I
ever--Well, exceptin' Jim Busby's tumblin' off the market-house last
month, there hasn't been a decent accident in this place since last
summer. How'm I goin' to live, I want to know? In other countries
people keep things movin'. There are murders and coal-oil explosions
and roofs fallin' in--'most always somethin' lively to afford a
coroner a chance. But here! Why, I don't get 'nough fees in a year to
keep a poll-parrot in water-crackers. I don't--now, that's the honest
truth."
"That does seem discouraging."
"And then the worst of it is a man's friends won't stand by him.
There's Doolan, the coroner in the next county. He found a drowned man
up in the river just beyond the county line. I ought to have had the
first shy at the body by rights, for I know well enough he fell in
from this county and then skeeted up with the tide. But no; Doolan
would hold the inquest; and do you believe that man actually wouldn't
float the remains down the river so's I could sit on 'em after he'd
got through? Actually took 'em out and buried 'em, although I offered
to go halves with him on my fees if he would pass the body down this
way. That's a positive fact. He refused. Now, what do you think of a
man like that? He hasn't got enough soul in him to be worth preachin'
to. That's my opinion."
"It wasn't generous."
"No, sir. Why, there's Stanton come home from Peru with six mummies
that he dug out of some sepulchre in that country. They look exackly
like dried beef. Now, my view is that I ought to sit on those things.
They're human beings; nobody 'round here knows what they died of. The
law has a right to know. Stanton hasn't got a doctor's certificate
about 'em, and I'm sworn to look after all dead people that can't
account for bein' dead, or that are suspicioned of dyin' by foul play.
I could have made fifty dollars out of those deceased Peruvians, and
I ought to've done it. But no! Just as I was about to begin, the
supervisors, they shut down on it; they said the county didn't care
nothin' about people that had been dead for six hundred years, and
they wouldn't pay me a cent. Just as if _six thousand_ years was
anything in the eye of the law, when maybe a man's been stabbed, or
something, and when I'm under oath to tend to him! But it's just my
luck. Everything appears to be agin me, 'specially if there's money in
it."
"You do seem rather unfortunate."
"Now, there's some countries where they frequently have earthquakes
which rattle down the houses and mash people, and volcanoes which
burst out and set hundreds of 'em afire, and hurricanes which blow 'em
into Hereafter. A coroner can have some comfort in such a place as
that. He can live honest and respectable. Just think of settin' on
four or five hundred bodies killed with an earthquake! It makes my
mouth water. But nothin' of that sort ever happens in this jackass
kind of a land. Things go along just 'sif they were asleep. We've got
six saw-mills 'round this town, but nobody ever gets tangled in the
machinery and sawed in half. We've got a gunpowder-factory out beyond
the turnpike, but will that ever go up? It wouldn't if you was to toss
a red-hot stove in among the powder--leastways, not while I'm coroner.
There's a river down there, but nobody ever drowns in it where I can
have a hitch at him; and if there's a freshet, everybody at once gets
out of reach. If there's a fire, all the inmates get away safe, and no
fireman ever falls off a ladder or stands where a wall might flatten
him out. No, sir; I don't have a fair show. There was that riot out
at the foundry. In any other place three or four men would have been
killed, and there'd a been fatness for the coroner; but of course,
bein' in my county, nothin' occurred exceptin' Sam Dixon got kicked
in the ribs and had part of his ear bitten off. A man can't make an
honest livin' under sech circumstances as them; he can't, really."
"It does appear difficult."
"I did think maybe I might get the supervisors to let me go out to
the cemetery and set on the folks that are buried there, so's I could
overhaul 'em and kinder revise the verdicts that've been rendered on
'em. I'd a done it for half price; but those fellows have got such
queer ideas of economy that they wouldn't listen to it; said the town
couldn't go to any fresh expense while it was buildin' water-works.
And I wanted to put the new school-house out yer by the railroad or
down by the river, so's some of the children'd now and then get
run over or fall in; but the parents were 'posed to it for selfish
reasons, and so I got shoved out of that chance. Yes, sir, it's rough
on me; and I tell you that if there are not more sudden deaths in this
county the law's got to give me a salary, or I'm goin' to perish by
starvation. Not that I'd mind that much for myself, but it cuts me up
to think that as soon as I stepped out the next coroner'd begin right
off to earn a livin' out of me."
Then I said "Good-morning" and left, while Mr. Maginn selected a fresh
stick to whittle. Mr. Maginn, however, had one good chance recently to
collect fees.
The country around the town of Millburg is of limestone formation. The
town stands, as has already been mentioned, on a high hill, at the
foot of which there is a wonderful spring, and the belief has always
been that the hill is full of great caves and fissures, through which
the water makes its way to feed the spring. A year or two ago they
organized a cemetery company at Millburg, and they located the
graveyard upon the hill a short distance back of the town. After
they had deposited several bodies in the ground, one day somebody
discovered a coffin floating in the river. It was hauled out, and it
turned out to be the remains of Mr. Piggott, who was buried in the
cemetery the day before. The coroner held an inquest, and they
reinterred the corpse.
On the following morning, however, Mr. Piggott was discovered bumping
up against the wharf at the gas-works in the river. People began to
be scared, and there was some talk to the effect that he had been
murdered and couldn't rest quietly in his grave. But the coroner was
not scared. He empaneled a jury, held another inquest, collected his
fees and buried the body. Two days afterward some boys, while in
swimming, found a burial-casket floating under the bushes down by the
saw-mill. They called for help, and upon examining the interior of the
casket they discovered the irrepressible Mr. Piggott again. This was
too much. Even the ministers began to believe in ghosts, and hardly
a man in town dared to go out of the house that night alone. But the
coroner controlled his emotions sufficiently to sit on the body, make
the usual charges and bury Mr. Piggott in a fresh place in his lot.
The next morning, while Peter Lamb was drinking out of the big spring,
he saw something push slowly out of the mud at the bottom of the pool.
He turned as white as a sheet as he watched it; and in a few minutes
he saw that it was a coffin. It floated out, down the creek into the
river, and then Peter ran to tell the coroner. That official had a
jury waiting, and he proceeded to the coffin. It was old Mr. Piggott,
as usual; and they went through the customary routine with him, and
were about to bury him, when his family came forward and said they
would prefer to inter him in another place, being convinced now there
must be a subterranean channel leading from the cemetery to the
spring. The coroner couldn't object; but after the Piggotts were gone
he said to the jury that people who would take the bread out of the
mouth of a poor man in that way would be certain to come to want
themselves some day. He said he could easily have paid off the
mortgage on his house and let his little girl take lessons on the
melodeon besides, if they'd just allowed Piggott to wobble around the
way he wanted to.
There was no more trouble up at the cemetery after that until they
buried old Joe Middles, who used to have the fish-house over the river
at Deacon's. They entombed the old man on Thursday night. On Friday
morning one of the Keysers was walking down on the river-bank, and he
saw a man who looked very much like Mr. Middles sitting up in a canoe
out in the stream fishing. He watched the man as he caught two or
three fish, and was just about to conclude that it was some unknown
brother of Mr. Middles, when the fisherman looked up and said,
"Hello, Harry."
[Illustration: JOE MIDDLES]
"Who are you?" asked Keyser.
"Who am I? Why, Joe Middles, of course. Who'd you think I was?"
remarked the fisherman.
"You ain't Joe Middles, for he's dead. I went to his funeral
yesterday."
"Funeral!" exclaimed the fisherman as he stepped ashore. "Well, now,
by George! maybe that explains the thing. I've been bothering myself
the worst kind to understand something. You know that I remember being
at home in bed, and then I went to sleep somehow; and when I woke up,
it was dark as pitch. I gave a kick to stretch myself, and knocked the
lid off of this thing here--a canoe I thought it was; and then I set
up and found myself out here in the river. I took the lid to split
into paddles, and I saw on it a plate with the words 'Joseph Middles,
aged sixty-four;' and I couldn't imagine how in thunder that ever got
on that lid. Howsomdever, I pulled over to the shanty and got some
lines and bait and floated out again, thinking while I was here I
might as well get a mess of fish before I got home. And so it's a
coffin, after all, and they buried me yesterday. Well, that beats the
very old Harry, now, don't it? I'm going to row right over to the
house. How it'll skeer the old woman to see me coming in safe and
sound!"
Then the resurrected Mr. Middles paddled off. The cemetery company
failed the following month, from inability to sell the lots.