Versicles From the Portfolio of a Sexagenarian
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ADDRESS TO A FALSE TOOTH. They err who call thee false. Thou art, dear tooth, The very typo of constancy and truth ; For I have had thee long, and, since the day When first the dentist fix'd thee in my jaw, Have found thee still impervious to decay, As perfect as a pearl without a flaw, And so exempt from every ache and pain From which my other teeth are seldom free, That I should reckon it no trifling gain Could I exchange the few that yet remain For sound and serviceable ones like theo. Who was thy former owner, canst thou say ? And is he still alive, or is he dead ? Some clown, who lost theo in a village fray, Extracted by a cudgel from his head ? Some famish'd wretch, ashamed to beg or steal, Who sold thee to obtain a scanty meal ? Or some young tandem-driving fop mayhap, Who parted with thee in a fool
...ish prank, That he might spit more freely through the gap, And hit a horse-fly on his leader's flank.f Didst thou belong unto a bard, whose dental Appendages were chiefly ornamental, Because he lived on air?though, now and then, They served to nibble at a nail or pen ? Or didst thou dwell within a Templar's jaw, And help to eat his way unto the bar ? Miss Hawkins, in her " Memoirs," relates that, in early life, Emma Hart, afterwards the notorious Lady Hamilton, being out of place, and in a state of almost utter starvation, was on her way to a dentist with the intention of raising a small sum by the sale of her fine set of teeth, when she encountered an old fellow- servant, who persuaded her to resort to a less creditable method of relieving her necessities. .f The fashion of having a front tooth extracted or perforated, in order to enable them to spit with greater facility and precision, prevailed among the members of our fou...
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