“That's the mistake that people make,” said Mr. Ritchie mournfully. “They usually associate a visit to their dentist with some atrocity--some moments of agony--that was the result of the old tradition, dating back to John Leech's days. Of course, in those dark ages dentists did not exist, whereas now---- I think I would do well to do a little crown work between the tooth I am stopping and the next: the gap between the two is certain to work mischief before many months are over, and the back of the nearest molar has become so worn through the pressure of that overgrown one below it that, if not checked in time, it will break off with you some fine day. I'm glad that you came to me to-day. I will make a new man of you.” He had the little ingenious emery drill working away before the clergyman remembered that he had not come to pay a professional visit to the dentist--that is to say, he had meant that his visit should be a professional one so far as his own profession went, but not that it should be a professional one so far as the profession of the other man went. But it seemed to him that the dentist was fast approaching the moment when he, the dentist, would not be amenable to the _convenances_ of the parochial visit, but would become completely absorbed in the _nuances_ of dental science which every revolution of the emery drill seemed to be revealing. He could say nothing. He was in an unaccustomed posture for speech. He was lying in the steely embrace of that highly nickelised chair, with his face looking up to the ceiling--exactly the reverse of the attitude in which he felt so fluent every Sunday evening. With his head bending over the top of his pulpit, he felt that he was equal to explaining everything in heaven above or the earth beneath; but sprawling back, with his eyes on the ceiling, and a thing whizzing like a cockchafer in his mouth, he was incapable of protest, even when he had recovered himself sufficiently to feel that a protest might be judicious, if not actually effective. He submitted. For the next four weeks he was, off and on, in the hands of Mr. Ritchie. It seemed as he went on that he had not a really sound tooth in his head, though he told me, almost tearfully, that previously he had always prided himself on his excellent teeth.