trees--did I say the trees? No; of course they weren't in the
trees--imagine dentists in the trees--ha! ha! Here, take off this
gaspipe from my face till I laugh--really I just want to laugh--only to
laugh----

Well,--that's what it felt like.

Meanwhile they were operating.

[Illustration: I did go . . . I kept the appointment.]

Of course I didn't _feel_ it. All I felt was that someone dealt me a
powerful blow in the face with a sledgehammer. After that somebody
took a pickax and cracked in my jaw with it. That was all.

It was a mere nothing. I felt at the time that a man who objects to a
few taps on the face with a pickax is overcritical.

I didn't happen to wake up till they had practically finished. So I
really missed the whole thing.

The assistants had gone, and the dentist was mixing up cement and
humming airs from light opera just like old times. It made the world
seem a bright place.

I went home with no teeth. I only meant them to remove one, but I
realized that they had taken them all out. Still it didn't matter.

Not long after I received my bill. I was astounded at the nerve of it!
For administering gas, debtor, so much; for removing teeth, debtor, so
much;--and so on.

In return I sent in my bill:

DR. WILLIAM JAWS
DEBTOR

To mental agony $50.00
To gross lies in regard to the nothingness of gas 100.00
To putting me under gas 50.00
To having fun with me under gas 100.00
To Brilliant Ideas, occurred to me under gas and lost 100.00
------
Grand Total $400.00

My bill has been contested and is in the hands of a solicitor. The
matter will prove, I understand, a test case and will go to the final
courts. If the judges have toothache during the trial, I shall win.

_III.--My Lost Opportunities_

THE other day I took a walk with a real estate man. Out in the suburbs
he leaned over the wooden fence of an empty lot and waved his hand at
it.

"There's a lot," he said, "that we sold last week for half a million
dollars."

"Did you really!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," he said, "and do you know that twenty-five years ago you could
have picked that up for fifty thousand!"

"What," I said, "do you mean to say that I could have had all that