buckskin purse with the draw string broken, but be that as it may,
we are generally fairly well content with life until the teeth
begin to come.

First there are the milk teeth. Right there our troubles start.
To use the term commonly in use, we cut them, although as a matter
of fact, they cut us--cut them with the aid of some such mussy
thing as a toothing ring or the horny part of the nurse's thumb,
or the reverse side of a spoon--cut them at the cost of infinite
suffering, not only for ourselves but for everybody else in the
vicinity. And about the time we get the last one in we begin to
lose the first one out. They go one at a time, by falling out,
or by being yanked out, or by coming out of their own accord when
we eat molasses taffy. They were merely what you might call our
Entered Apprentice teeth. We go in now for the full thirty-two
degrees--one degree for each tooth and thirty-two teeth to a set.
By arduous and painful processes, stretching over a period of
years, we get our regular teeth--the others were only volunteers--
concluding with the wisdom teeth, as so called, but it is a
misnomer, because there never is room for them and they have to
stand up in the back row and they usually arrive with holes in them,
and if we really possessed any wisdom we would figure out some way
of abolishing them altogether. They come late and crowd their way
in and push the other teeth out of line and so we go about for
months with the top of our mouths filled with braces and wires and
things, so that when we breathe hard we sob and croon inside of
ourselves like an Aeolean harp.

But in any event we get them all and no sooner do we get them
than we begin to lose them. They develop cavities and aches and