man with an emotional Adam's apple always wears
an open front collar. I know these things, but am debarred from telling
them by reason of a solemn oath. But I have not yet been able to
discover why every dentist keeps a canary in his office. Nor do I know
why it is, just as you settle your neck back on a head rest that's every
bit as comfortable as an anvil, and just as a dentist climbs into you
as far as the arm pits and begins probing at the bottom of a tooth which
has roots extending back behind your ears, like an old-fashioned pair of
spectacles, that the canary bird should wipe his nose on a cuttle bone
and dash into a melodious outburst of two hundred thousand twitters,
all of them being twitters of the same size, shape, and color. For that
matter, I don't even know what kind of an animal a cuttle is, although I
should say from the shape of his bone as used by the canary instead of
a pocket handkerchief, that he is circular and flat and stands on
edge only with the utmost difficulty. If you will pardon my temporary
digressions into the realm of natural history, we will now return to the
main subject, which was your tooth.

The moment the muscular young man starts up his motor and gives the
canary its music cue and begins pawing over his tool collection to pick
out a good sharp one, you recover. All of a sudden you feel fine, and
so does the tooth. Neither one of you ever felt better. The fox terrier
must have killed the woodchuck and then committed suicide. You are
about to mention this double tragedy and beg the young man's pardon for
causing him any trouble and excuse yourself and go away, but just then
he quits feeling of his biceps and suddenly seizes you by your features
and undoes them. If you are where you can catch a glimpse of yourself in
a mirror you will immediately note how much the human face divine can be
made to look like an old-fashioned red brick Colonial fire place.

There are likely to be several things you would like to talk about. You
are full of thoughts seeking utterance. For one thing you want to tell
him you don't think the brand of soap he uses on his hands is going to
agree with you at all. You probably don't care personally for the way
your barber's thumb tastes either, but a barber's thumb is Peaches
Melba alongside of a dentist's. Before you can say anything though he
discovers a cavity or orifice of some sort in the base of your tooth.
It seems to give him pleasure. Filled with inte