_Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one
was, that they escaped teething._ --Pudd'nhead Wilson's
Calendar

_There is this trouble about special providences--namely,
there is so often a doubt as to which party was intended to
be the beneficiary. In the case of the children, the bears,
and the prophet, the bears got more real satisfaction out of
the episode than the prophet did, because they got the
children._ --Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar


This history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change which
Roxana has consummated, and call the real heir "Chambers" and the
usurping little slave, "Thomas `a Becket"--shortening this latter name to
"Tom," for daily use, as the people about him did.

"Tom" was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. He would
cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper without
notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall, then
climax the thing with "holding his breath"--that frightful specialty of
the teething nursling, in the throes of which the creature exhausts its
lungs, then is convulsed with noiseless squirmings and twistings and
kickings in the effort to get its breath, while the lips turn blue and
the mouth stands wide and rigid, offering for inspection one wee tooth
set in the lower rim of a hoop of red gums; and when the appalling
stillness has endured until one is sure the lost breath will never
return, a nurse comes flying, and dashes water in the child's face,
and--presto! the lungs fill, and instantly discharge a shriek, or a yell,
or a howl which bursts the listening ear and surprises the owner of it