he 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 extra roots and
we spend a good part of our lives and most of our substance with the
dentist. Nevertheless, in spite of all we can do and all he can do, we
keep on losing them. And after awhile, they are all gone and our face
folds up on us like a crush hat or a concertina and from our brow to our
chin we don't look much more than a third as long as we used to look.
We dislike this folded-up appearance naturally--who wouldn't? And we get
tired of living on spoon victuals and the memory of past beef-steaks. So
we go and get some false ones made. They have to be made to order;
there appears to be no market for custom made teeth; you never see any
hand-me-down teeth advertised, guaranteed to fit any face and withstand
a damp climate. Getting them made to order is a long and unhappy process
and I will pass over it briefly. Having got them, we find that they do
not fit us or that we do not fit them, which comes to the same thing.
The dentist makes them fit by altering us some and the teeth some, and
after some months they quit feeling as though they didn't belong to us
but had been borrowed temporarily from somebody's loan collection of
ceramics.

But just about the time they are becoming acclimated and we are getting
used to them, the interior of our mouth for private reasons best known
to itself changes around materially