Americans in Europe Author:George Monroe Royce Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in. THE AMERICAN DENTIST. The first American in Paris one would naturally suppose to be the Minister Plenipotentiary. But this is not so. The first America... more »n in Paris is a dentist. I know very well that this statement will be received in the American quarter —and especially in the American Church, Avenue de 1'Alma—with scorn and derision. I shall not pause, however, just now to argue the question, but if you will take the trouble to stop the first Frenchman you meet in the " Champs filysees " and ask him who is the most distinguished American in Paris, or in Europe, he, I am quite sure, will give you the name of this dentist. And he deserves his great eminence, for he, like the very rich lady, is a true type, if not the best type, of a genuine American. First of all he is a self-made and a well-made man, if the making of a great fortune counts for anything ; and do we not all know that it counts for everything ? This gentleman was born in a little village in the State of Pennsylvania. His father, I believe, was a poor farmer and the boy had no schooling to speak of. I do not know the particulars of his early life, nor how he got a start in his profession. By some means, however, he made his way to Philadelphia and managed to get employment there with a dentist. Soon after his arrival in the City of Brotherly Love he sent to some sort of exhibition a set of handsome artificial teeth. These false teeth caught the artistic eye of a distinguished American dentist who lived in Paris. This gentleman made inquiries, found the young dental artist, and carried him off to Paris as his assistant. Now this American dentist had no less a personage than the Emperor of All the French among his clients. The dentist had, I am sorry to say, his failings—as who of us has not? Well, it so ...« less