either foot or hand to save
their lives.

It was here I first heard of "tooth-jumping." Let one of my old
neighbors tell it in his own way:

"You take a cut nail (not one o' those round wire nails) and place its
squar p'int agin the ridge of the tooth, jest under the edge of the gum.
Then jump the tooth out with a hammer. A man who knows how can jump a
tooth without it hurtin' half as bad as pullin'. But old Uncle Neddy
Cyarter went to jump one of his own teeth out, one time, and missed the
nail and mashed his nose with the hammer. He had the weak trembles."

"I have heard of tooth-jumping," said I, "and reported it to dentists
back home, but they laughed at me."

"Well, they needn't laugh; for it's so. Some men git to be as
experienced at it as tooth-dentists are at pullin'. They cut around the
gum, and then put the nail at jest sich an angle, slantin' downward for
an upper tooth, or upwards for a lower one, and hit one lick."

"Will the tooth come at the first lick?"

"Ginerally. If it didn't, you might as well stick your head in a swarm
o' bees and fergit who you are."

"Are back teeth extracted in that way?"

"Yes, sir; any kind of a tooth. I've burnt my holler teeth out with a
red-hot wire."

"Good God!"

"Hit's so. The wire'd sizzle like fryin'."

"Kill the nerve?"

"No; but it'd sear the mar so it wouldn't be so sensitive."

"Didn't hurt, eh?"

"Hurt like hell for a moment. I held the wire one time for Jim Bob
Jimwright, who couldn't reach the spot for hisself. I _told_ him to hold
his tongue back; but when I touched the holler he jumped and wropped
his tongue agin the wire. The words that man used ain't fitty to tell."

Some of the ailments common in the mountains were new to me. For
instance, "dew pizen," presumably the poison of some weed, which,
dissolved in dew, enters the blood through a scratch or abrasion. As a
woman described it, "Dew pizen comes like a risin', and laws-a-marcy how
it does hurt! I stove a brier in my heel wunst, and then had to hunt
cows every morning in the dew. My leg swelled up black to clar above the
knee, and Dr. Stinchcomb lanced the place seven times. I lay on a pallet
on the floor for over a month. My leg like to killed me. I've seed
persons jest a lot o' sores all over, as big as my hand, from dew
pizen."

A more mysterious disease is "milk-sick," which prevails in certain
restricted districts, chiefly where the cattle graze in rich and deeply
shaded coves