TOOTHACHE.

Wairoa Bell, Volume V, Issue 190, 24 March 1893, Page 4

TOOTHACHE.

To have it out or not ? that is the question — Whether ’tis better for the jaws to suffer The pangs and torments of an aching tooth, Or to thke steel against a host of troubles, And, by extracting, end them ? To pull—to tug ! —• No more : and by a tug to say we end The toothache, and a thousand natural ills The jaw is heir to. ’Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished ! To pull—to tug ! To tug—perchance to break ! Ay, there’s the rub, For in that wrench what agonies may come, When we have half-dislodged the stubborn foe, Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes au aching tooth of so long life, For who would bear the whips and sting* of pain, The old wife’s nostrum, dentist’s contumely ; The pangs of hope deferred, kind sleep’s delay ; The insolence of pity, and the spurns, That patient sickness of the healthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make For one poor shilling ? Who would fardels bear, To groan and siuk beneath a load of pain ? But that the dread of something lodged within The linen-twisted forceps, from whose pangs No jaw at ease returns, puzzles the will And makes it rather bear the ills it has Than fly to others that it knows not of. Thus dentists do make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicldied o’er with the pale cast of fear; And many a one, whose courage seeks the door, With this regard his footsteps turns away, Scared at the name of dentist.