er belt,
which was connected with the shafting of a machine-shop in the street
back of the house. The doctor experimented with it several times on
nails firmly inserted in a board, and it worked splendidly. The first
patient he tried it on was Mr. Potts. When the forceps had been
clasped upon Potts' tooth, Dr. Slugg geared the machine and opened the
valve. It was never known with any degree of exactness whether the
doctor pulled the valve too far open or whether the engine was working
at that moment under extraordinary pressure. But in the twinkling of
an eye Mr. Potts was twisted out of the chair and the movable stand
began to execute the most surprising manoeuvres around the room.
It would jerk Mr. Potts high into the air and souse him down in
an appalling manner, with one leg among Slugg's gouges and other
instruments of torture, and with the other in the spittoon. Then it
would rear him up against the chandelier three or four times, and
shy across and drive Potts' head through the oil portrait of Slugg's
father over the mantel-piece. After bumping him against Slugg's
ancestor it would swirl Potts around among the crockery on the
wash-stand and dance him up and down in an exciting manner over the
stove, until finally the molar "gave," and as Potts landed with his
foot through the pier-glass and his elbow on a pink poodle worked in a
green rug, the machine dashed violently against Dr. Slugg and tried
to seize his leg with the forceps. When they carried Potts home, he
discovered that Slugg had pulled the wrong tooth; and Dr. Slugg never
sent to collect his bill. He canceled his contract with the man who
owned the planing-mill, and began to pull teeth in the old way, by
hand. I have an impression that Slugg's patent can be bought at a
sacrifice.

[Illustration: DR. SLUGG'S INVENTION]

Mr. Potts, a day or two later, resolved to take the aching tooth out
himself. He had heard that a tooth could be removed suddenly and
without much pain by tying a string around it, fixing the string to
a bullet and firing the bullet from a gun. So he got some string and
fastened it to the tooth and to a ball, rammed the latter into his
gun, and aimed the gun out of the window. Then he began to feel
nervous about it, and he cocked and uncocked the gun about twenty
times, as his mind changed in regard to the operation. The last time
the gun was cocked he resolved _not_ to take the tooth out in that
way, and he began to let the hammer down