Martinsburg Gazette And Public Advertiser

THE TOOTHACHE

"There was never yet a philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently:
However they have writ in the style of gods,
And made a push at distance and sufferance."

It had been raining all day. The eye could no longer read the poetry of the blue heavens. A most monotonous vapour obscured the beauties of nature, and the air was filled with watery particles, which did not seem to come from any place in particular, but went in all sorts of oblique direction into people's doors and under their umbrellas. Men stride along in the dim distance indistinctly, with huge shapeless overshoes and melancholy countenances; and chimneys and steeples loomed up through the fog with something of the dignity of 'misty mountain tops.' There is nothing extraordinary in the fact that after having paraded for some time through the streets, I was rather wet. From a smart shower, when the big drops come dashing and spattering down in straight lines, there is a refuge, and when the umbrella becomes saturated, and discharges its little rivers from the ends of the whalebone, you are content to step for a few moments under a shed, or on a door sill, till it is over; but from such drizzling weather there is no refuge; it defeats all calculation; the whole city is soaked; the banisters are damp, and one may often write his name with his finger upon the entry wall.

Hour after hour dragged heavily on. The sun, it was presumed, had descended, and nocte atra incubuit mare. I went home through the mud, splashing on by the obscure lamp lights, completely undone in regard to dress, that I had scarcely the ambition to turn aside for a mud-puddle, but trudged on alike through the wet and dry with a kind of miniature despair. Well, I reached the house, flung aside my dripping cloak, shook the drops from my forlorn hat, and laid my unfortunate looking gloves upon the table, hoping to lose the uncomfortable feelings of the day in the cheerful warmth of a blazing fire; but mortals are seldom blest with a freedom from trouble; as one vanishes, others come on like waves of the sea, and so we are not often at rest. A dull pain, which I had for some time suffered in my face excited some suspicions of a visit from a bitter enemy of mine; until increasing gradually it assumed a character more painful and distinct than agreeable, and I was compelled reluctantly to acknowledge that I had the toothache. I will not linger to inform the reader what an insufferable torment this is—how it goes on aching, aching, aching, hour after hour, how nobody sympathizes with you but some poor wretch who has recently been himself excruciated in a similar way, with a long train of sable recollections which throng upon the mind with the gloom of a funeral, at the mention of that inexorable disease—but I hasten to the conclusion of this history. The imperturbable gravity which overshadowed my visage excited some attention. Yielding with apparent patience, because I knew it could not be avoided, I drew forth from my pocket one of your long red silk handkerchiefs, and bound it around my face.

"What's the matter?" said one.

"Oh, nothing, but a little toothache. It will go off presently."

"What's the matter?" asked another.

"The toothache," said I.

"Ah, how do you do?" said a third. "What's the matter with your face?"

"The toothache—the toothache, the toothache," said I, pacing backwards and forwards across the room.

"Hold some brandy in your mouth," said one.

"Have you tried opium? Have you taken laudanum?" said one.

"Smoke a cigar," said another.

I allowed myself to be persuaded into several remedies. They put my feet in boiling hot water, enveloped my head in flannel, and sent me to bed in some measure relieved.— The tooth, however, continued to ache, ache, ache, as if some fiend were beating and beating upon the nerve with his invisible tormenting hammer. Sometimes I would sink into a troubled sleep; I lost completely my hold upon my waking thoughts and the objects around, and floated off among scenes of strange silent confusion; familiar faces appeared laughing and talking, and perchance, I would catch the glance of a bright eye, or the tone of a sweet voice, which I had known before and remembered; for these will occasionally recur to the memory waking or asleep, when a sudden start would put them all to instantaneous flight, and there I was, the still moonlight streaming in upon the floor, and the fiend still beating and beating with unremitting perseverance. I heard a distant clock, through the silence of the night, striking two, three and four, and despairing at length of winning 'death's beautiful brother,' to my eyelids, I lay watching, with feverish anxiety, the first streaks of gray light that broke in the east.

I had almost resolved to have it out; these gothic appeals to cold iron' are any thing but agreeable. I have an instinctive horror of a dentist. There is to me something monstrous in his deliberate self possession. He walks so cooly to his case, chooses you out with so much tranquility his proper instrument, wraps his buckskin around it with such searing pleasure, walks up to you so slowly, says he won't hurt you, and as his vile steel rattles against your teeth, he talks of the weather—and oh—I hate the very name of dentist.

When I awoke in the morning the very thoughts of him frightened away the pain; and, still buried in handkerchiefs, I sallied forth with a resolution to hold out the fortress at all events for another day. It was a fine sunshiny morning; all the world were more merrily in motion; but my unlucky bandages continued to be the object of notice, and the topic of conversation wherever I went.

"How do you do?" asked my friend Tom.—

"What the deuce is the matter? Have you the mumps?"

"Good morning," replied I, speaking through the handkerchiefs as scarcely to be intelligible. "I have the toothache—had it all night—haven't slept a wink," (a white fib that everybody tells when they have been disturbed during a part of the night: it does the hearer no harm, and there is no fear of discovery) "haven't slept a wink—cheek swollen, head ache—feel the deuce."

"Have you tried a hot brick and vinegar?"

"No," returned I, still struggling for utterance against the obstructions which bound my mouth and nose. "I bottled my feet, held brandy in my mouth, and covered my head with hot flannel."

"Fool! nonsense! brandy indeed! nothing worse for the teeth than brandy. The others decay, too, as quick again. I'll tell you how to cure your toothache. My wife had the toothache just as you have, and I made her wash behind her ears with cold water every morning for a week. Try it. It's a certain cure."

"I will; good morning."

Went into my friend M's office. There were Mr. A., the poet; Mr. F. the lawyer, Col. S. and young doctor P.—all fine fellows, and excellent friends of mine, would cure me if they could.

"Ah, how do you do? how are you?"

"Good morning, gentlemen.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Got the toothache—face swelled up as large as a goose egg. Look here—haven't slept these two nights."

"Have you tried a hot onion applied outwardly? You must squeeze it in a flannel bag, and keep it close to the cheek. It's the only cure, and a certain one. My cousin was relieved of a horrid toothache by it."

"I'll try it," said I.

"Take oil of cloves," said lawyer F. "that's the best thing in the world."

"I can tell you an infallible remedy for the toothache," observed my friend the Colonel. "Take a table spoonful of brandy, and four table spoonsful of ginger, mix it up well with two tea spoonsful of mustard, wrap your head up in flannel, go to bed, put a couple of hot bricks to your feet, and keep on this poultice till it takes the skin off—You'll never have the toothache again as long as you live."

A little while afterwards—tooth still aching—I sat over my desk in a brown study.— My two friends B. and W. walked in.

"How do you this morning? What's the matter with your face?"

"The toothache—had it all night—no sleep—look like a fright."

"Hand me that pen," said W. "I'll give you a cure. Take of niter dulcis, so much, and alum pulv. so much."

"Horrible," said B. "I tried that once, and screwed my face all out of joint. Have you tried the vapour bath?"

"No."

"I will," said I.

We were interrupted by Mr. L. He is one of your plain common sense sort of people: practicable, fixed in his own opinions, a little inclined to stoicism, with a dash of savage philosophy, partly affected to hide tender feelings, and about six feet and one inch high without his shoes.

"What's the matter with your face?" inquired he.

"Toothache," said I, "it's all swelled—keeps me awake— and—"

"Try my nitris dulcis, and alum pulv." said W.

"Curse your nitris dulcis and alum pulv?" said L. "there is but one cure for the toothache, and that's a sure one."

I looked tremblingly up; he had his great square fist doubled, as if he held something in his hands; he raised it to his mouth, and screwed it around with the motion of a dentist uprooting some huge double grinder with three diverging prongs. My friends were silent, I turned a little pale. He saw what an impression he had made, and with a determined grin that went to the very soul, he bawled out—"Out with it, you fool; and there's an end. It's worth all the nitris dulcis, and alum pulv. in the universe."

There was a melancholy truth in what he remarked. It sunk into my heart; I made up my mind, and when my worthy advisers left me, I walked around to Mr. L.'s—staid about five minutes, and to confess the truth, I have had pleasanter moments; but the impetuous coursers of time dashed on, and I came out the happiest of men.