2005B FRQ #2

         Then one day at San Francisco had come the news 

     of his mother’s death; she had left him some money—

     not much, but enough to set him up in business; so he 

     had cut loose from the charlatan and had opened his 

5   “Dental Parlors” on Polk Street, an “accommodation 

     street” of small shops in the residence quarter of the 

     town. Here he had slowly collected a clientele of 

     butcher boys, shop girls, drug clerks, and car 

     conductors. He made but few acquaintances. Polk 

10 Street called him the “Doctor” and spoke of his 

     enormous strength. For McTeague was a young giant, 

     carrying his huge shock of blond hair six feet three 

     inches from the ground; moving his immense limbs, 

     heavy with ropes of muscle, slowly, ponderously. His 

15 hands were enormous, red, and covered with a fell of 

     stiff yellow hair; they were hard as wooden mallets, 

     strong as vises, the hands of the old-time car-boy. 

     Often he dispensed with forceps and extracted a 

     refractory tooth with his thumb and finger. His head 

20 was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient, like that of 

     the carnivora. 

         McTeague’s mind was as his body, heavy, slow to 

     act, sluggish. Yet there was nothing vicious about the 

     man. Altogether he suggested the draught horse, 

25 immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient. 

         When he opened his “Dental Parlors,” he felt that 

     his life was a success, that he could hope for nothing 

     better. In spite of the name, there was but one room. 

     It was a corner room on the second floor over the 

30 branch post-office, and faced the street. McTeague 

     made it do for a bedroom as well, sleeping on the big 

     bed-lounge against the wall opposite the window.

     There was a washstand behind the screen in the corner 

     where he manufactured his moulds. In the round bay

35 window were his operating chair, his dental engine, 

     and the movable rack on which he laid out his instru-

     ments. Three chairs, a bargain at the second-hand 

     store, ranged themselves against the wall with 

     military precision underneath a steel engraving of the 

40 court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, which he had bought 

     because there were a great many figures in it for the 

     money. Over the bed-lounge hung a rifle manu-

     facturer’s advertisement calendar which he never 

     used. The other ornaments were a small marble-

45 topped centre table covered with back numbers of 

     “The American System of Dentistry,” a stone pug dog 

     sitting before the little stove, and a thermometer. A 

     stand of shelves occupied one corner, filled with the 

     seven volumes of “Allen’s Practical Dentist.” On the 

50 top shelf McTeague kept his concertina and a bag of 

     bird seed for the canary. The whole place exhaled a 

     mingled odor of bedding, creosote, and ether. 

         But for one thing, McTeague would have been 

     perfectly contented. Just outside his window was his 

55 signboard—a modest affair—that read: “Doctor 

     McTeague. Dental Parlors. Gas Given”; but that was 

     all. It was his ambition, his dream, to have projecting 

     from that corner window a huge gilded tooth, a molar 

     with enormous prongs, something gorgeous and 

60 attractive. He would have it some day, on that he was 

     resolved; but as yet such a thing was far beyond his 

     means.