It was a gold mine for the enterprising proprietor, whose moderate charge for a sight is only threepence a head. He is a man of engaging humour, and he is not only on intimate terms with his "bones," but with the eminent scientists who still wage a bitter but bloodless feud over the remains, whose biography so far is only written in sand.
That he is not only a cheerful but a witty man is greatly to his credit, for he lives a lonely life on his sand hills, with only the cliffs as his neighbours and the roar of the ocean and the whistle of the wind to break the silence. For labour he excavates his graveyard, and for relaxation he catalogues his bones. His free and easy comments on his subject (or subjects, rather) are really very exhilarating to the philosophic tourist, and indeed it was he who first drew my attention to the deterioration of English teeth.
The eccentricity of the Early Victorian teeth was for decades the pet subject of the Continental caricaturist, the peculiarity being generally ascribed to the British female, her male companion merely rejoicing in hideous plaids, abnormal side-whiskers, and a fearful helmet decorated with a flowing puggaree. Times have changed. The British teeth have ceased to protrude, and, indeed, they now veer around to the other extreme, and instead of prominent front teeth the Englishman now often rejoices in no front teeth at all, or between none and the ordinary number nature intends there are countless variations.
I have been waiting for a genial caricaturist to seize on this simple and unostentatious national trait. If bad teeth are a common sign of ill-health, then alas for the English masses who form the strength of the nation, for their neglected teeth are a menace and a warning.
There is no emotion in the world, except the fear of death, that will not succumb to an aching tooth. A villain with the toothache is more villainous than without it; while a lover with the toothache does not exist, for a lover with the toothache ceases to be a lover. The toothache is so exquisite a pain that it demands the undivided attention of the brain, with a persistency so nagging that no other pain enjoys. It will even wreck a man's career. What man can write a great poem or win a battle with an ulcerated tooth tearing at his nerves! Should we investigate, it will be discovered that the greatest men in the world who made history, art, and science, never had toothache, which first of all kills the imagination. Mathematicians might survive, for such imagination as they have is riveted in facts.