as we are only half-blind, such comments as these are all the
consolation we get. "Oh! _near-sighted_, is she? Yes, it is very
fashionable now-a-days for young ladies to carry eye-glasses, and call
themselves near-sighted!" Or, "Pooh! It's all affectation. She can see
as well as any body, if she chooses. She thinks it is pretty to half
shut her eyes, and cut her acquaintances." I meet my friend A----,
some morning, who returns my salutation with cold politeness, and
says, "How cleverly you managed to cut me at the concert last night!"
"At the concert! I did not see you." "O no! You could see well enough
to bow to pretty Miss B----, and her handsome cousin; but as for
seeing your old schoolmate, two seats behind her,--of course you are
too near-sighted!" In vain I protest that I could not see her,--that
three yards is a great distance to my eyes. She leaves me with an
incredulous smile, and that most provoking phrase, "O yes! I _suppose_
so!" and distrusts me ever afterwards. Alas! we see just enough to
seal our own condemnation.

Who is free from this malady? As I look around in society, I see
staring glassy ellipses on every side "in the place where eyes ought
to grow,"--and perhaps most of the unfortunate owls get along very
comfortably with their artificial eyes. But imagine a bashful youth,
awkward and near-sighted, whose friends dissuade him from wearing
glasses. Is there in the universe an individual more unlucky, more
blundering, more sincerely to be pitied?

See that little boy, who, having put on his father's spectacles, is
enjoying for the first time a clear and distinct view of the evening
sky. "Oh! is that pretty little yellow dot a star?" exclaims the
delighted child. Poor innocent! a star had always been to him a dim,
cloudy spot, a little nebula, which the magic glass has now resolved;