Teeth




One of the most pleasant features about being born, as I conceive
it, is that we are born without teeth. I believe there have been
a few exceptions to this rule--Richard the Third, according to
the accounts, came into the world equipped with all his teeth and
a perfectly miserable disposition; and once in a while, especially
during Roosevelt years, when the Colonel's picture is hanging on
the walls of so many American homes, we read in the paper that a
baby has just been born somewhere with a full set, and even, as in
the case of the infant son of a former member of the Rough Riders,
with nose glasses and a close-cropped mustache. This, however, may
have been a pardonable exaggeration of the real facts. As I recall
now, it was reported in a dispatch to the New York Tribune from
Lover's Leap, Iowa, during the presidential campaign eight years
ago.

In the main, though, we are born without teeth. We are born
without a number of things--clothes for example--although Anthony
Comstock is said to be pushing a law requiring all children to be
born with overalls on; but teeth is the subject which we are now
discussing. This absence of teeth tends to give the very young
of our species the appearance in the face of an old fashioned