Our Spectacles
Man never looks more dignified dian when he takes a spectacle-case from his pocket, opens it, unfolds a lens, sets it astride his nose, and looks you in the eye. I have seen audiences overawed by such a demonstration, feeling that a man who could handle glasses In that way must be equal to anything. We have known a lady of plain face, who, by placing an adornment of this kind on the bridge of her nose, could give an irresistible look, and by one glance around the room would transfix and eat up the hearts of a dozen old bachelors.
There are men, who, though they never read a word of Latin or Greek, have, by such facial appendage, been made to look so classical,
2$ that the moment they gaze on you, you quiver as if you had been struck by Sophocles or Jupiter. We strongly suspect that a pair of glasses on a minister’s nose would be worth to him about three hundred and seventy- six dollars and forty -two cents additional salary. Indeed, we have known men who had kept their parishes quiet by this spectacular power. If Deacon Jones criticized, or Mrs. Go -about gossiped, the dominie would get them in range, shove his glasses from the tip of his nose close up to his eyebrows, and concentre all the majesty of his nature into a look that consumed all opposition easier than the burning-glass of Archimedes devoured the Roman ships.
But nearly all, young and old, near-sighted, and far-sighted, look through spectacles. By reason of our prejudices, or education, or temperament, things are apt to come to us magnified, or lessened, or distorted. We all see things differently — not so much because our eyes are different, as because the medium through which we look is different.
Some of us wear blue spectacles, and consequently everything is blue. Taking our position at Trinity Church, and looking down Wall Street, everything is gloomy and depressing in financials, and looking up Broadway, everything is horrible in the fashions of the day. All is wrong in churches, wrong in education, wrong in society. An undigested slice of corned-beef has covered up all the bright prospects of the world. A drop of vinegar has extinguished a star. We understand all the variations of a growl. What makes the sunshine so dull, the foliage so gloomy, men so heavy, and the world so dark? Blue spectacles, my dear,
BLUE SPECTACLES!
An unwary young man comes to town. He buys elegant silk pocket - handkerchiefs on Chatham Street for twelve cents, and diamonds at the dollar-store. He supposes that when a play Is advertised “for one night only,” he will have but one opportunity of seeing it. He takes a greenback with an X on it as a sure sign that it is ten dollars, not knowing there are counterfeits. He takes five shares of silvermining stock in the company for developing the resources of the moon. He supposes that every man that dresses well is a gentleman. He goes to see the lions, not knowing that any of them will bite; and that when people go to see the lions, the lions sometimes come out to see them. He has an idea that fortunes lie thickly around, and all he will have to do is to stoop down and pick one up. Having been brought up where the greatest dissipation was a blacksmith - shop on a rainy day, and where the gold on the wheat is never counterfeit, and buckwheat - fields never issue false stock, and brooks are always “current,” and ripe fallpippins are a legal - tender, and blossoms are honest when they promise to pay, he was unprepared to resist the allurements of city life. A sharper has fleeced him, an evil companion has despoiled him, a policeman’s “billy” has struck him on the head, or a prison’s turnkey bids him a orruff “Good - niofht!”
What got him into all this trouble? Can any moral optician inform us? Green goggles, my dear,
GREEN goggles!
Your neighbor’s first great idea in life is a dollar; the second Idea is a dollar — making in all two dollars. The smaller ideas are cents. Friendship is with him a mere question of loss and gain. He will want your name on his note. Every time he shakes hands, he estimates the value of such a greeting. He is down on Fourth of Julys and Christmas Days, because on them you spend money Instead of making it. He has reduced everything in life to vulgar fractions. He has been hunting” all his life for the cow that had the golden calf. He has cut the Lord’s Prayer on the back of a three - cent piece, his only regret that he has spoiled the piece. He has calculated how much the Interest would have been on the widow’s “two mites” if she had only kept them till now. He thinks that the celestial city with pavements of gold is a great waste of bullion. No steel or bone eye-glass would fit the bridge of his nose. Throueh what does he look? Gold spectacles, my dear,
GOLD SPECTACLES
I know a man who sees everything as it is: black is black, white Is white, and speckled is speckled. He looks straight through a man, taking him at any point — heart, lungs, liver, ribs, backbone being no obstruction. People pass before him for what they are worth. The color of the skin is nothing, the epaulettes nothing, the spurs are nothing. He thinks no more of a dog because it once ran under the carriage of the Lord Mayor; and when a prince has an attack of nose - bleeding, the blood seems no more royal than that of other people. He takes out of one of his vestpockets, scales, in which he weighs a man In an Instant. He takes out of the other vest-pocket a chemical apparatus, by which he tells how much of the man Is solid, and how much gas. He never saw an angel or a spook. He never had a presentiment. Rather than trouble the spirits of the future world to come this way, he concludes to wait till he can go to them. He consults no wizard to find out the future; but by honest Industry and Christian principle, tells his own fortune. The number of cats that wake him up at unseasonable hours is four, while to others it would have been fifty.
In the music of his life there are but few staccato passages. He uses no microscope to enlarge the little, or telescope to bring hither the distant, but simply a plain pair of spectacles, honest spectacles,
TRUTH-SPEAKING SPECTACLES!
But sometimes these optical instruments get old and dim. Grandmother’s pair had done good work in their day. They were large and round, so that when she saw a thing she saw it. There was a crack across the upper part of the glass, for many a baby had made them a plaything, and all the grandchildren had at some time tried them on. They had sometimes been so dimmed with tears that she had to take them off and wipe them on her apron before she could see through them at all. Her “second - sight “had now come, and she would often let her glasses slip down, and then look over the top of them while she read. Grandmother was pleased at this return of her vision. Getting along so well without them, she often lost her spectacles. Sometimes they would lie for weeks untouched on the shelf in the red morocco case, the flap unlifted. She could now look off upon the hills, which for thirty years she had not been able to see from the piazza. Those were mistaken who thought she had no poetry in her soul. You could see it in the way she put her hand under the chin of a primrose, or cultured the geranium. Sitting on the piazza one evening, in her rocking-chair, she saw a ladder of cloud set up against the sky, and thought how easy it would be for a spirit to climb it. She saw in the deep glow of the sunset a chariot of fire, drawn by horses of fire, and wondered who rode in it. She saw a vapor floating thinly away, as though it were a wing ascending, and Grandmother muttered in a low tone: ‘’ A vapor that appeareth for a little season, and then vanisheth away.” She saw a hill higher than any she had ever seen before on the horizon, and on the top of it a King’s castle. The motion of the rocking-chair became slighter and slighter, until it stopped. The spectacles fell out of her lap. A child, hearing it, ran to pick them up, and cried: “Grandmother, what is the matter?” She answered not. She never spake again. Second - sight had come! Her vision had grown better and better. What she could not see now was not worth seeing. Not now through a glass darkly, Grandmother had no more need of spectacles!