Page:Wonderful adventures of sixteen British seamen.pdf/19

 more acute, by there being no commiseration for the wretchedness it occasions. The belief in this and a keen recolleetionrecollection [sic] of bodily and mental sufferings, have produced the following little narrarative:-

Some years ago, a tremendous tooth, with threothree [sic] enormous prongs, confined me to my room, and irritated me to a state little short of distraction. With my head tied up in a bandana handkerchief, both hands on my afflicted jaw, I sat swaying my body to and fro, as if endeavouring to calm a fractious infant; at other times I stamped about like a lunaetielunactic [sic], or plunged on my bed like a frog swiming. Being at length reduced to a state of exhaustion, I was anxious to retreat from all intereourseintercourse [sic] with the world; yet knoekknock [sic] after knoekknock [sic] at the door continued, as if only to inereasoincrease [sic] my already excessive nervous irritability. Many of the persons I had no desire to see, but some were those interwoven with my professional pursuits, and I was compelled to be at home. I had to account for my disconsolate appearance—to describe my tormenting pangs, till I was weary of speaking upon the subject. To all my fervid deseriptionsdescriptions [sic], I reeeivedreceived [sic] the cold remark, and the ehillingchilling [sic] advice, that it was only the toothache, and that I had better have it extracted. All this time, the salivary glands, were pouring their fluids into my mouth, the gastric juices were wasting their powers, and I was in a paroxysm of excruciating anguish. It was astonishing how persons eouldcould [sic] calmly behold such a complieationcomplication [sic] of miseries. Nothing eouldcould [sic] bobe [sic] eaten; slops became offensive; the sight of a spoon frightful; and a basin revolting as a perpetual blister. Even the air could not be taken!-it was too much for the petulance of my capricious tooth. On it