io By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



spilling the plaster, the patient had to stand on 

 his head ! Whether this be so or not, any one 

 that knows the proud and dignified Afghan will 

 understand that our doctor had a task requiring 

 some tact not to say courage. This was the more 

 the case, as Afghan officials on this frontier have 

 to be so careful of their political reputations that 

 private interviews with Britishers are avoided, and 

 the operation had to be carried out coram populi. 

 This was all a thing of the past. On the present 

 occasion the teeth were ready in the doctor's 

 pocket. The moment arrived ; the set was pro- 

 duced in the crowded durbar tent and fitted into 

 the old gentleman's mouth. Alone he walked 

 out to another tent where my wife's mirror had 

 been set on a table, and all awaited the result in 

 suspense. He returned amid dead silence, smiling. 

 Never had been seen such a smile, even among the 

 ladies who display their incisors in our illustrated 

 papers, and it never left his face. If the theory is 

 well founded that continuous and persistent smil- 

 ing itself produces a happy mind, that Afghan's 

 future was assured ! x 



1 It is curious to notice that in these out-of-the-way corners of the 

 earth, the fame of British medical work is often more advanced by 

 some coup of this sort than by work of a really more meritorious 

 kind. Seistan, for instance, was ravaged by small-pox. The whole 



