Most cursed of all are the dentists who made too many parenthetical remarks — dentists who secure your instant and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it, and then stand there and drawl through a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste.

A Tramp Abroad, Appendix D, The Awful German Language (p. 392)