Fifty years ago, Uncle Sam was almost a stranger on the maps; he hadn't a friend in the world, apparently, while he had more enemies than he could shake a stick at. Every body snubbed him, and every body wanted to lick him. But Sam has now grown to be a crowder; his spunk, too, goes up with his resources, and he don't wait for any body to "knock the chip off his hat," but goes right smack up to a crowd of fighting bullies, and rolling up his sleeves, he coolly "wants to know" if any body had any thing to say about him, in that crowd! Uncle Sam is no longer "a baby," his _physique_ has grown to be quite enormous, and we rather expect the old fellow will have to have a pitched battle with some body soon, _or he'll spile!_ Bill Whiffletree's Dental Experience. Have you ever had the tooth-ache? If not, then blessed is your ignorance, for it is indeed bliss to know nothing about the tooth-ache, as you know nothing, absolutely nothing about pain--the acute, double-distilled, rectified agony that lurks about the roots or fangs of a treacherous tooth. But ask a sufferer how it feels, what it is like, how it operates, and you may learn something theoretically which you may pray heaven that you may not know practically. But there's poor William Whiffletree--he's been through the mill, fought, bled, and died (slightly) with the refined, essential oil of the agony caused by a raging tooth. Every time we read _Othello_, we are half inclined to think that _more_ than half of Iago's devilishness came from that "raging tooth," which would not let him sleep, but tortured and tormented "mine ancient" so that he became embittered against all the world, and blackamoors in particular. William Whiffletree's case is a very strong illustration of what tooth-ache is, and what it causes people to do; and affords a pretty fair idea of the manner in which the tooth and sufferer are medicinally and morally treated by the _materia medica_, and friends at large. William Whiffletree--or "Bill," as most people called him--was a sturdy young fellow of two-and-twenty, of "poor but respectable parents," and 'tended the dry-goods store of one Ethan Rakestraw, in the village of Rockbottom, State of New York. One unfortunate day, for poor Bill, there came to Rockbottom a galvanized-looking individual, rejoicing in the euphonium of Dr. Hannibal Orestes Wangbanger. As a surgeon, he had--according to the album-full of _certificates_--operated in all the scientific branches of amputation, from the scalp-lock to the heel-tap, upon Emperors, Kings, Queens, and common folks; but upon his science in the dental way, he spread and grew luminous! In short, Dr. Wangbanger had not been long in Rockbottom before his "gift of gab," and unadulterated propensity to elongate the blanket, set every body, including poor Bill Whiffletree, in a furor to have their teeth cut, filed, scraped, rasped, reset, dug out, and burnished up!