and unostentatious national trait. If bad teeth are a common sign of
ill-health, then alas for the English masses who form the strength of
the nation, for their neglected teeth are a menace and a warning.
There is no emotion in the world, except the fear of death, that will
not succumb to an aching tooth. A villain with the toothache is more
villainous than without it; while a lover with the toothache does not
exist, for a lover with the toothache ceases to be a lover. The
toothache is so exquisite a pain that it demands the undivided attention
of the brain, with a persistency so nagging that no other pain enjoys.
It will even wreck a man's career. What man can write a great poem or
win a battle with an ulcerated tooth tearing at his nerves! Should we
investigate, it will be discovered that the greatest men in the world
who made history, art, and science, never had toothache, which first of
all kills the imagination. Mathematicians might survive, for such
imagination as they have is riveted in facts.
In addition to the other disabilities, toothache is undignified; there
is nothing interesting or romantic about it! It is one of the first
pains impartial nature bestows on her children, and which is the only
common heritage that justifies that misleading clause in the American
Constitution that all men are born free and equal. That pain and what
was in our childhood euphoniously called "tummy ache" lead the revolt in
nurseries.
There is hardly a bodily ache which literature has not idealised, but an
aching tooth has yet to find its dramatic poet. In fact, there is about
it a touch of the ludicrous which its concentrated anguish does not
justify. It is curious that so intense a suffering should be so
undramatic, but it is the one agony which does not desert us this side
of the grave, and which even the genius of a Shakespeare would hesitate
to bestow on his hero or heroine. Anguish comes to them in many ways,
but the great poet discreetly avoids teeth.
The only historical reference to teeth I have ever noticed is when the
sacred Inquisition, always original and playful, tears them one by one
out of the mouths of heretics and Jews as being gently conducive to
confession. But even this undoubted torture is singularly undramatic,
and has, I believe, never been used by a tragic poet.
It is one of the aggravations of toothache that it inspires but lukewarm
sympathy; even your parents know you will not die of it. The greatest
concession to your suffering is that you may stay away from school, and,
if you are very bad, mother ties a big handkerchief about your face,
which is something, but not much. But even parents are strangely
inconsiderate, and I realised even in my infant days that had these same
sufferings been situated more favourably in my body I should have been
promoted to bed and the family doctor.
A very famous American dentist met the English husband of an American
friend of mine with the genial congratulation, "My dear sir, I wish you
joy! You have married a first-rate, A1 set of teeth."
Possibly the tribute was too professional, but it really meant so much.
Indeed, one of the most promising signs of the future of the American
people is the importance they attach to good teeth. The American dentist
is the greatest in the world. His deft skill constructs those delicate
and complicated instruments that help him to repair the ravages of time
and ill-health. Not only does he produce an exact copy of nature, but
his is the only instance known to science where human ingenuity excels
nature's--his teeth do not ache! It is also required of the modern
dentist not only that he should be a consummate mechanic, but he must be
a doctor and surgeon as well, to be able to cure the cause behind the
damage.
When I see so many people here who have bad teeth--which to say the
least is a blemish--it is a prophecy that the next generation will have
even worse, which means a deterioration in health, therefore in
intelligence and ambition. So in due course England will lose her proud
position as the greatest nation in the world, simply because England
would not go to the dentist; which is a curious neglect for a people
whose morning tub is much less likely to be neglected than their morning
prayers.
If I were one of the powers that be I should require all Board Schools
to furnish their pupils with tooth-brushes and toothpowder, and the
morning session should be opened with a general brushing of teeth. Not
only that, but I would have a dentist attached to each school district,
whose duty it should be to attend to the children's teeth free of
charge. If England wants good war material (and there has been some
adverse criticism of the quality of her soldiers) she must cultivate it,
and it is her duty to step in where the parent fails. A day labourer
with a large family does his best if he and they keep body and soul
together. It is for the State to step in and rescue the young teeth from
premature decay, thus undoubtedly increasing the health of the growing
body, and at the same time teaching the young things those cleanly
habits which make for self-respect and health.
The English have not the habit of going to the dentist; money paid to
him they consider wasted--there is nothing to show for it. It is like
putting new drains into the house, only not so necessary. They still
have teeth taken out rather than stopped (filled), as being cheaper, and
when they are all out they replace them on too slight a provocation by
what American humour calls "store teeth."
Nor are the English supersensitive. Their complacency, which upholds
them in more important things, inclines them to believe that if their
fathers muddled along with bad teeth so can they. It does not take away,
they think, from the charms of their best girl if she smiles at them
with a gap in her teeth, or if in colour they shade into the darkest of
greys. As for a man, he can always lie in ambush behind his moustache,
or at worst he can draw down his upper lip and leave the unseen a
mystery.
Still, there is hope for the future, and England shows signs of
awakening! A truly progressive member of a certain board of guardians
recently had the temerity to demand tooth-brushes for the pauper
children. The worthy mayor who presided at the meeting was nearly
paralysed at the audacity of the request. He not only sternly refused,
but he denounced it as pampered luxury and extravagance, and he was so
roused by the outrageous proposal that he taunted his brother guardians,
and said they themselves had probably not indulged in the sinful luxury
of a tooth-brush for forty-five years. Possibly, but at any rate it
proves that England is really awakening, and that even an infant pauper
may some day look forward to the rapture of possessing a tooth-brush!
Yet even bad teeth sometimes find their Nemesis! A very important public
position was recently vacant for which there were some two hundred
applicants. These slowly resolved themselves down to two--one an able
man, and the other an exceptionally able man. They had to have a
deciding interview with the arbiter of their fate, so great a man that
he is called a personage, and he gave the position to the able man
rather than the exceptionally able man. His explanation for his curious
choice was quite simple, "He really had such horrid teeth that I could
not bear to have him always about."
Has any historian left his testimony as to the teeth of the ancient
Romans, when that great nation fell into decadence? Statues all testify
that the deterioration did not affect their noses, but I feel sure that
if their rigid marble lips could open we should find the first cause of
their historic downfall.
As the extinction of a nation is foreordained in its very inception, so
the fall of America is possibly already predestined. Well, it may be
owing to trusts, but it will not be owing to teeth. All over the
American land is heard the busy wheel of the dentist. Hundreds of
thousands of dentists are forever filling and scraping and pulling
American teeth, and the American people emerge from their dentist chairs
and smile broadly, a source of joy to the beholder and not pain. They
pay their dentists, if not with rapture, at least with resignation,
because they know that their children will inherit good teeth, and it
will be a pleasure to kiss them from their cradle on, at all stages. Nor
when their young men go out to war will they be declared by the medical
examiners unfit because of their bad teeth. Instead, they will clench
their good teeth and fight right pluckily, as only those can who attend
strictly to business, undisturbed by pain.
One hears England called the freeest republic in the world, and that
here, as nowhere else, every man has his chance. Well, England may be,
to all intents and purposes, a republic, but to rise from the ranks is
only for the man of commanding talent, and for him there is always room
at the top--everywhere--all over the world. But for the ordinary man who
has ordinary abilities, and yet is not without ambition, America is the
land.
He may start as a day labourer and have luck and his son may one day be
President of the United States; or he may grace any one of those
innumerable offices which are in the gift of a grateful party! That
keeps self-respect lively in a man, and is what makes him know not only
his own trade, but just a little more. How one suffers because the
British workman only does what he is obliged to--and not that. How often
one rebels because the subordinate English official knows just what he
is obliged to know, and not a hair's breadth more! That same man set
down in America will learn to the fullest extent of his intelligence.
Tooth-brushes make for health, health makes for intelligence, and it is
the intelligent man the world wants and pays for; which proves the
incalculable importance of tooth-brushes in the progress of the world.
Possibly the atmosphere of a republic is more conducive to good teeth;
but, really, England should make a supreme effort to save her waning
power from falling into the grasp of the great republic, which it is
inevitably bound to do if England does not go to the dentist.
In the political economy of nations the tooth-brush is of much more
importance than the sword, and toothpowder is infinitely more important
than gunpowder. As England never considers the millions she annually
spends in gunpowder, why does she not pause in her martial career and
spend a few thousand pounds in toothpowder?
_The Pleasure of Patriotism_
In the way of rulers there is nothing quite so nice as a king. A king
focuses one's patriotism, and being above everybody in his kingdom is
probably the only person in it who arouses no envy. The fact is he
inspires in us a sense of proud proprietorship. We rejoice that he has
the loveliest of queens, and the lovelier she looks the more we are
gratified, just as if she were one of the family. So when the king's
diplomacy wins a bloodless victory we are as proud as if most of the
credit belonged to us.
Indeed, one realises the intimate pleasures of patriotism most on coming
from an impersonal republic to a kingdom where the royal family is a
vital part of the national life. We republicans are nothing if not
patriotic, but while we are loyal to the broader aspects of patriotism
we miss perhaps its little intimate pleasures.
It is, for example, rather difficult to feel a deep sense of personal
loyalty towards the man whom the freak of fortune places for four years
at the head of the nation, and of whom one knows very little. The
personal interest one takes in him and his family is quite artificial.
Opposed to him in politics, one doubts his fitness for his great
position; and if one is of his party one favours him with that frank
criticism which one naturally feels for the man who yesterday was no
better than oneself, and who in four years will come down from his
exalted height with the rapidity of a sky-rocket, only to join the army
of the "forgotten" so delightfully characteristic of republics.
A republic is a worthy and useful institution, but there is a monotony
in a country that consists entirely of kings and queens. It is very nice
for all to be born free and equal, but it is not interesting, and there
is some comfort in knowing it is not true, for Nature hurls us into the
world a living contradiction to that rash statement of the Declaration
of Independence.
It is only since I have lived in England that I have recognised the
value of the lesser patriotism. Without being in any way disloyal to my
own country, I must confess that I am conscious of quite new emotions
in this at least partial possession of a king. One feels a critical
sense of ownership. The Houses of Parliament belong to me, and
Westminster Abbey, and the Horse Guards. A whole troop of these
clattered past me in Oxford Street to-day, and, though they didn't know
it, I reviewed them from the top of a 'bus. I own the sentries before
Buckingham Palace, and I take a personal interest in the new gilding of
the great railings, for so much gilding must impress visiting
royalities, and visiting royalities ought to be impressed!
Now our American Government not only declines to impress foreigners, but
takes unnecessary pains to remind us that Benjamin Franklin appeared in
homespun and wollen stockings at the Court of France. Times have changed
since then, and though we have discarded wollen stockings in our
intercourse with foreign Courts, our republic, in her consistent
encouragement of an out-of-date Spartan simplicity, leaves her
ambassadors to pay her legitimate little bills themselves, with the
result that she limits her choice of representatives to men who are not
only distinguished, but also rich enough to pay the heavy and necessary
expenses of their great position, which should by right be covered by an
adequate salary.
It is not that our Government is impecunious; it is only pennywise. Now
for the first time in our history America has an embassy in London
worthy of her greatness, thanks not to our Government, but to the
princely munificence of her new Ambassador. Perhaps he will never know
the impetus he has given to the lesser patriotism, nor with what
innocent pride we have contemplated his residence from every point of
view, and with what patriotic rapture we watched the erection of that
splendid marquee destined for the welcome of his fellow-countrymen.
For the first time I realised that this was _our_ embassy and _our_
marquee, and I was proud of my country. These were the outward and
visible sign of our great prosperity. Perhaps our Ambassador thinks he
is the temporary owner of this stately splendour. It is a pardonable
mistake, but the fact is we are the owners, we Americans who have
strayed into this crowded and lonely London by way of Cook's tours, and
floating palaces, and who are, many of us, homesick for the sight of
something "real American."
Last Saturday we celebrated that famous Fourth of July which England is
so courteous as to forgive. For the first time we penetrated into our
embassy. We were aliens no more, we were, so to speak, on our native
heath, we could not be crushed even by those magnificent footmen in
powder and plush--our footmen--who, as beseems the footmen of a free and
independent people, were quite affable.
How proudly we patriots filed up the marble stairs and stared at the
pictures and at each other, and acknowledged with a genuine glow of
pride how well we were all dressed. I guess!
"We are a prosperous nation," I exulted, as I had some republican
refreshment in the marquee under a roof of green-and-white striped
bunting. How good the lemonade tasted! A patriotic lady, with a huge bow
of stars and stripes tied in her buttonhole, said enthusiastically,
"There is nothing like American lemonade!"
For once one rose superior to the English. One longed to recite to them
the Declaration of Independence. I swelled with pride, it was all so
well done, and it was my embassy, my marquee, my ices, and my
Ambassador. For the first time one revelled in the joy of a worthy
possession. For once the English accent was relegated where it
belonged--to the background--and we Americans talked unreproved with all
those delightful and familiar intonations which eighty millions of
people have stamped as classic.
My only other experience of a Fourth of July reception, though there
have been many distinguished and hospitable American Ministers since,
was years ago. Two of us, urged on by patriotism, chartered a
four-wheeler, and were deposited before a modest house, which was so
dark inside, compared to the glare outside, that we stumbled up the dim
stairs behind other ardent republicans, and groped for the hand of our
hostess, who had apparently mislaid her smile early in the day. Then we
blinked our way into a dark drawing-room, where a circle of patriots
stared coldly at us.
In our search for our Minister we attached ourselves to a little
procession that filed into the next room, and we found him talking with
delightful affability to an Englishman. To an Englishman, and on this
day of all days! To an enemy of that great country which paid him his
inadequate salary, while we, his own people, stood meekly about waiting
until it should suit him to notice us, and bestow on us that handshake
which is the inexpensive entertainment of all republican functions.
First we stood on one foot, and then we stood on the other, and then we
coughed--a deprecating, appealing cough--and finally our Minister took a
lingering, fond farewell of his Englishman, and then turned to us, with
a frost-bitten expression of resignation which did not encourage us to
linger. We shook his limp hand, and then we jostled each other into the
dining-room.
We were filled with an acute resentment, but far from declining to break
bread in his house we decided to take it out of him in refreshments; but
the unobtrusive simplicity of the preparations foiled our unworthy
designs.
Those were simpler days, and enthusiastic republicans arrived in every
variety of attire. Most popular of all was that linen "duster" with
which in all its creases the travelling American loved to array himself.
Sometimes he wore a coat under it and sometimes he didn't. Those were
the days of paper collars and "made-up" ties, and on state occasions a
cluster diamond "bosom pin." It was a stifling hot day, and we passed
into the small dining-room, where a long table imprisoned three waiters.
It was a question of each for himself, and I remember the father of a
family clutching a plate of what we Americans call "crackers," and
refusing the contents to all but his own offspring.
How we struggled for tea, and what a mercy it was that the waiters were
protected from bodily assault by the table! One bestowed on me a
tablespoonful of ice cream, densely flavoured with salt. For a moment I
hated my country. Republican elbows poked me in every direction, and
while I stood helpless in the crush I saw an elderly and stout
compatriot pour the tea she had captured into the saucer, and with a
placid composure proceed to drink it in that simple way.
"To think of it," a voice cried into my ear in pained and shocked
surprise, "and she a relation of Longfellow's!"
Exhausted I found myself in the street in a chaos of frantic
republicans, part of whom clamoured to get into the house, and part
struggled to get out.
If our great Government would only realise that there is nothing so good
for the soul as a thrill of patriotism! It is worth cultivating. We
cannot all lay down our lives for our country, but there are lesser acts
of loyalty which are of infinite value. It belongs to the lesser
patriotism to show other folks that we are just as good as they are, if
not a bit better. It is our patriotic duty to wear good clothes, to look
prosperous, and to prove to foreigners that the star-spangled banner is
quite at home even when floating over a palace. It is really worth while
going down Park Lane just to say "Our Embassy!"
When I told the cabman to drive to the American Embassy, and for the
first time in history he positively knew the way, I thrilled with
patriotic pride. It marked an epoch.
_Romance and Eyeglasses_
It is curious to observe that even the greatest realists do not venture
to bestow eyeglasses on their heroines. It is rather odd too, seeing how
many charming women do in real life wear them, nor are they debarred by
them from the most dramatic careers and the most poignant emotions. But
while the modern novelist has bestowed eyeglasses on everybody else he
has not yet had the hardihood to put them on the nose of his heroine.
Why?
It is a problem which again shows the unquestionably undeserved and
superior position of man, for a novelist does not hesitate to put him
behind any kind of glasses, and leave him just as fascinating and
dangerous as he was before. Eyeglasses are so much the common lot of
humanity these degenerate days that babies are nearly born with them, to
judge at least from the tender age of the bespectacled infants one sees
trundled past in their perambulators. And there is no doubt that the
time will come, if the strain on the hearing increases from the diabolic
noises in the streets, that the next generation's hearing will be as
much affected as our eyes are now. The result will be that all the world
will be using ear-trumpets, and the novelist of the future, the
accredited historian of manners, will be obliged, if he is at all
accurate, to have his love-sick hero whisper his passion to the heroine
through an ear-trumpet. However it is a comfort not to be obliged to
solve the riddles of the future.
Still if it is inevitable that the future deaf hero will have to fall in
love with a deaf heroine, why should not the present astigmatic hero in
novels be permitted to fall in love with a beautiful creature in
glasses? He certainly does it often enough in real life. Of course it
would not do for a heroine to have a wooden leg, I grant, and yet I have
met a hero with a wooden leg, and I am quite sure I know several who
have lost an arm; why then should it be required of us poor women to be
so perfect? If a man can wear spectacles without forfeiting his position
as a hero of romance, I demand the same right for a woman. Why, a man
can even be bald and she will love him all the same! Now I ask would the
hero love her under the same circumstances? There is no use arguing, for
that very fact proves that there are laws for men and laws for women.
The truth is she will love him under every objectionable kind of
circumstance, both in real life and in novels. Has not a thrilling
romance of recent years produced a hero without legs, and made him all
the more hideously captivating to the patron of the circulating library?
Now what novel reader would, even under the auspices of so gifted a
novelist, take any stock in a heroine similarly afflicted? Yes I fear,
though it is neither here nor there, that men also have it their own way
in literature.
To be sure there are instances of blind heroines inspiring a passion,
and also, I believe, of lame heroines limping poetically through the
pages of a novel, as well as burdened with other disabilities which
apparently never take away from their charms; but I know of no heroine
whom the novelist has endowed with a _pince-nez_. Now why are glasses
in literature so incompatible with romance in a woman while they never
damage a man?
Why can a man look at the object of his passionate adoration through all
the known varieties of glasses and yet not lose for an instant the
breathless interest of the most gushing of novel readers? His eyeglasses
may even grow dim with manly tears, and the lady readers' own eyes will
be blurred with sympathetic moisture. But let the heroine weep behind
her glasses and the most inveterate devourer of novels will close the
book in revolt. It is no use to describe how the heroine's great brown
eyes looked yearningly at the hero behind her glasses, nor how they swam
in tears behind those same useful articles, the reader refuses to read,
and even if the heroine is only nineteen and bewitchingly beautiful, she
is at once divested of any romance.