Purblind and short-sighted friends! You will listen to me,--_you_ will
sympathize with me; for you know by painful experience what I mean
when I say that we near-sighted people do not receive from our
hawk-eyed neighbors that sympathy and consideration to which we are
justly entitled. If we were blind, we should be abundantly pitied, but
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;
and he can hardly believe that this brilliant point is not an optical
illusion. But when his mother assures him that the stars always appear
so to her, and he turns to look in her face, he says, "Why, mother!
how beautiful you look! Please to give me some little spectacles,
_all my own!_" She could not resist this entreaty,--(who could?)--and
little "Squire Specs" does not mind the shouts of his companions or
the high-sounding nicknames they give him, he so rejoices in what
seems to him a new sense, a _second sight_.
I was summoned, the other day, to welcome a family of cousins from a
distant State, whom I had not seen for a very long time. They were
accompanied, I was told, by a Boston lady, a stranger to us. I entered
the room with considerable _empressement_, but when my eye detected
the dim outline of a circle of bonneted figures, I stopped in despair
in the middle of the room, not knowing which was which, or whom I
ought to speak to first, and at last made an embarrassed half-bow,
half-courtesy, to the company in general. A confused murmur of
greetings and introductions followed, and, throwing aside my air of
stiff, ceremonious politeness, I rushed, with a smiling face, to the
nearest lady, shook hands with her in the most cordial manner, and
then, in passing, bowed formally to the next, who I concluded was the
stranger. What then was my surprise and utter confusion when she
caught me by the hand, and, drawing me towards her, kissed me
emphatically several times. "How _do_ you do, dear? Have you quite
forgotten me? Ah! You don't remember the times when you used to ride a
cock-horse, on my knee, to Banbury Cross, to see the old lady get on
her white horse!" What could I say? I was petrified. I could not
smile, I could not speak. My only feeling was mortification at my most
awkward mistake. Yet I ought to have become accustomed to such
embarrassments, for they are of very frequent occurrence.
"Why, Julia! what is the matter? How strangely your eyes look!" My
sister at this exclamation turns round, and I discover that from the
other end of the room I have been gazing at the unexpressive features
of her "back hair," which is twisted in a "pug," or "bob,"--which is
the correct term?--and surmounted by a tortoise-shell comb.
But in the whole course of my numerous mistakes and blunders, whether
ludicrous, serious, or embarrassing, I believe I have never mistaken a
cow for a human being, as was done by old Dr. E----. It was many years
ago, when Boston Common was still used as a pasture, and cows were
daily to be met in the crooked streets of the city, that this
gentleman, distinguished for the courtesy and old-school politeness of
his manner, no less than for his extreme near-sightedness, was walking
at a brisk pace, one winter's day, and saw, just before him, a lady,
as he thought, richly dressed in furs. As he was passing her, he
thought he perceived that her fur boa or tippet had escaped from her
neck, and, carefully lifting the end of it with one hand, he made a
low bow, raising his hat with the other, and said in his blandest
tone, "Madam, you are losing your tippet!" And what thanks did the
worthy Doctor receive, do you think, for this truly kind and polite
deed? Why, the lady merely turned her head, gave him a wondering stare
with her large eyes, and said, "Moo-o-o-o!"
As an offset to this instance of courtesy and good-breeding lavished
on a cow, let me give you, as a parting _bon-bouche_, another cow
anecdote, where, as you will see, there was no gentle politeness
wasted.
The Rev. Dr. H---- was an eccentric old man, near-sighted of
course,--all eccentric people are,--who lived in a small country town
in this neighborhood. Numerous are the traditionary accounts of his
peculiarities,--of his odd manners and customs,--which I have heard;
but it is only of one little incident that I am now going to speak. A
favorite employment of this good man was the care of his garden, and
he might be seen any pleasant afternoon in summer, rigged out in a
hideous yellow calico robe, or blouse, with a dusty old black straw
hat stuck on the back of his head, hoeing and digging in that beloved
patch of ground. One day as he was thus occupied, his wife emerged
from the house, dressed in a dark brown gingham, and bearing in her
hand some "muslins," which she began to spread upon the
gooseberry-bushes to whiten. She was very busily engaged, so that she
was not aware that her husband was approaching her with a large stick,
until she felt a smart blow across her shoulders, and heard his
peculiar, sharp voice shouting in her ears, "Go 'long! old cow! Go
'long! old cow!"