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than anywhere else.

      I asked him why he had to sacrifice those teeth; that they looked like fine teeth. Was it really necessary to have them out? Hadn't he taken a chance in having the ship's doctor play dentist? And then he poured out his whole soul to me about those teeth.

      "Mr. Allen," he said, "the ship's doctor didn't take them out. I haven't lost them. I'm wearing them in my coat pocket. Those teeth were artificial, Mr. Allen."

      "You see," he continued, – it seemed as if he just wanted to talk about those teeth, now that he was started, – "You see, Mr. Allen, I got those teeth to please my wife. I didn't really need them, only for looks. I've got all the rest of my teeth, except those side ones.

      "Wife said it was all right while I was home where my friends all knew me – were used to me; but in taking this trip among strangers, I really ought to have those gaps filled in. So I went to a toothsmith, and he shod me up with some new teeth. He talked about bridges, and scaffolding, and roofing, and one thing and another, and owing to the situation he found in his explorations, 'a partial plate,' as he called it, he thought was the best way out.

      "When he connected me with those teeth, it felt just like it looks to nail a shoe on a horse. I felt as a colt must feel when it's first hitched up with bit and bridle.

      "'Do you mean to tell me,' I asked that dentist, 'that I've got to go through life with that in my mouth?'

      "'Oh, no,' he said, 'this is only a partial plate. Some day you'll lose all your teeth and will have to have a double set, upper and lower. Then you will feel as if you were somebody else – this is only a little trouble. You'll get used to this partial plate and not mind it a bit. They look dandy. Just take a peek at yourself. You look ten years younger. You just stick to them for a couple of days and you'll be all right.'

      "I went home feeling that the bloom of youth was all rubbed off – felt as if I had a billiard ball in my mouth.

      "My wife was delighted, and gave me that same josh the dentist handed me – said I looked ten years younger.

      "I felt forty years older, and told her so – and when it came to eating, everything tasted just alike – and all bad.

      "I stood it for six hours, and gave up. I went to take them out and got scared. I couldn't get them out. Then I was sure the dentist had nailed them in.

      "I called him up and asked him would he go to his office? Told him I was in trouble. When I got there I found him waiting for me.

      "He wanted to know where they hurt.

      "I told him, 'All over.' That the joy and jounce and bounce of life had all left me. He had filled me full of woe and sadness. That my shoes pinched, my hair pulled, and my collar choked me.

      "'Take 'em out, doctor, take 'em out,' I sobbed. 'I don't believe they were made for me. I think you've made a mistake and got some other fellow's teeth in my mouth. I think these teeth were made for a very large man with a very large mouth,' I said.

      "He pried me loose from the work of his hands, and took the artificial part of me into his den, put it on his anvil, and ran it over his buzz saw and through his planer, and brought it back to me, and said, 'Open up,' just as if I were a horse; and he bitted and bridled me for another race.

      "I wrestled with those teeth for a week before I left for this trip. I kept them in different places – in the bathroom, on top of my chiffonier, and in my pocket. Not all the while, you understand. I got so I could take them out myself, and I alternated them between the place where they made me look ten years younger, and those places I've mentioned; and when I didn't have them in, my wife was giving me Hail Columbia. Said I didn't have as much sand as a Chippy bird; acted as if I were the only person who had ever had to learn to wear false teeth.

      "I made a few more trips to the dentist, to ask him if he was dead sure he hadn't got me breaking in some other fellow's teeth; and if he would plane them down a little here and there.

      "He growled considerable. Said he'd get them too loose, and then I'd be having trouble the other way.

      "Well, I got so I could wear those teeth and think of something else at the same time; and then I started for San Francisco to catch this ship. I can't understand it at all; but somehow or other, those teeth have shrunk. They began to shrink as soon as I struck the Pullman, and when I got aboard this ship the blamed things had shrunk some more. They got so they would drop on me while eating. I'd be going along all right, when all of a sudden, with a mouth-full of victuals, I'd find myself chewing those false teeth with my other teeth. I felt like a cannibal chewing a corpse. I felt like a ghoul robbing a graveyard. It was worse than the neck of a chicken, that any man who has kept house for twenty years or so, knows all about. After you've helped all the rest, all that's left for you is the neck, don't you know?"

      "Missouri" had me crying; but I gave three emphatic and sympathetic nods. I've kept house for more than twenty years, and I'm a connoisseur myself on that part of the fowl – and the gizzard.

      "Well," "Missouri" continued, "I felt like a Fiji Islander before the missionaries taught them to love their enemies, but not to eat them. So I'm wearing those teeth in my coat pocket.

      "I may not look so young, but I don't feel so like a blithering savage. I hate to go home without a full set of teeth, though.

      "How are the Japanese on dentistry, Mr. Allen? Do you suppose I could get fixed up over there?"

      I told him I didn't know about their dentistry, but that they were clever little beggars. That they were strong on tea and tooth brushes.

      "Tea, teeth, and tooth brushes," "Missouri" said, in a speculative and hopeful tone. "Now maybe so, maybe so," and we parted for the night.

      "Missouri" is not a half bad sort, and, anyway, his teeth story is different than a yarn on seasickness.

      III

      WONG LEE – THE HUMAN BELLOWS

      This is a fine, large ship – Japanese line.

      I don't call to mind any line of ships I have not sailed on prior to this voyage in my chasing up and down the world in search of a "meal ticket," and pleasure; but this is my first voyage on a Japanese liner, and I'm simply delighted with it.

      It contrasts delightfully with a ship I sailed on, on one of my former trips across the Pacific.

      That boat was all right, too. Good ship, good service – particularly good service – Chinese help; and anyone who has ever sailed with Chinese crews, waiters and room boys, knows what that means – nothing better in that line. I had a fine stateroom and a good room boy – that boy was a treasure.

      I cottoned to that boy the minute he grabbed my baggage at the wharf, and blandly said, "You blong my," as he led me to my stateroom.

      There was an obnoxious sign in that stateroom which read: "No Smoking in Staterooms." I settled for the long voyage, hung a coat over that sign, and lit up.

      Wong Lee flagged me with a word of warning: "No can slmoke stlate room. Slmoke loom, can do."

      "Wong," I said, "how fashion you talkee so? 'No can slmoke stlate loom!' No tlouble slmoke stlate loom. Can slmoke stlate loom easy, see?"

      If anyone tells you the Chinese can't see a joke, tell them to guess again. Wong saw that little one – saw it through a cloud of smoke, at that. Wong shut my stateroom door, like a boy in the buttery stealing jam, and said: "Lofficers findee out. They flobid."

      "All right, Wong, I won't tell them if you don't," I said. And Wong didn't – Wong certainly didn't betray me.

      The further we sailed the more I became attached to the boy – he took such excellent care of me – I got so I really loved that boy.

      All Wong's other duties seemed easy compared to his efforts, in my behalf, to see that my slight and harmless infraction of the ship's rules should not be discovered. If I dropped a little ash, Wong was on hand to brush it up. A tell-tale cigar stub, carelessly left – Wong was there to whisk it out of sight with: "Lofficers may come insplection any time. No can tell when."

      It wasn't my uneasiness at fear of being found out

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