Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1870-01-08
Spectacles.


I bc!isvc in srectacles, and think the
inventor of them deserves the same hearty
cncomium that honest Sanchc' Patza be-.
slowed upon the man who invented sleep.
Who Of all the millions that use spccta-
clcs can tell me the story Of SPANS life I!
o, ungrstcful and ungcncrous mortals !!
You write the biography and cherish the
memories of |" the plotters and disturbers
of the world" but knowing nothing Of,
and care nothing for, the best and trucst
benefactors of the race.
This Pisan nnonk-this Alexander de
Spina-must have been I maintain) a
loving and lovcable person, and favorite
with all in the Abbey, from the mighty
abbot to the humble porter. Although
he dcvoutly said "holy things" each
morn and cventide, he evidently believed
that the best way to make himself accept
able to the Lord was to do something to
benefit his fellow men. Mcthinks l be-
hold him painfully and thoughtfully OBJ
serving the vain and futile attempts ven-
cradle old monk is making to see the let
tiers of The Book.
Is there not, he wonders, something in
Gods wonderful world which will help
impaired vision or brighten the blurred and
misty page? At last, after years of study
and prayer and expcriment-just as his
own sight is growing dim and poor-Spina
produces the first pair Of spectacles ever
seen in this world.
Spina's invention was regarded as ver-
table godsend. 1t was described and COM
mcndcd in the pulpit. At this success
st. Clare hung his head in shame, and
from that day to this has had but few wor-
shippers or believers.
The invention ofspcctacles removed one
of the greatest terrors of old age. 1t
opened many sadly closed book, and set
many an idle pen in motion. 1t put need
les into old willing hands, and Herewith
happiness into old hearts.
It hardly seems possible, and yet it is
undoubtedly the fact, that mankind had
to do without spcctacles till near the end
of the thirtecth century. How Paul would
have priced "a pair Of spectacles! How
did Methuselah get along without specta-
cles during the last two or three hundred
years of his life? Eve herself, in her old
age, must have felt the want of spectaclos.
De Quincy somewhere says that tho an-
clients went to bed early, because their
mother earth could not afford to give them
candles. dare say the young folks of
antiquity would have appreciated long
sixes.' But to the elderly people whose
sight was poor they would have been a
cruel aggravation. The old gentleman
could not have read his book, nor the old
lady have piled her needle, by the candies
mild light" No candles! no novels Z!
no newspapers. no spectacles. All, that
antique world of which poets fable sofinely
may have been glorious world, but
"Bct,cr fifty years of Europe than cycle of
Cathay!'
Spectaclcs were a new thing in Chau-
GERS day, and loved to believe that the
old poet used them when writing the Can
tcrbury Tales. Shakespeare could have
said, with his own Bcnedick, II can see
yet without spectaclcs." But if he had
lived to a ripe old age, he would probably
have written new Hamlets and Macbeths by
their help. Good old Bishop Hall wore
glasses, and wrote pious meditation on
them. Swift foolishly avowed never to
use spectacles. Rough old johnson, though
ho did not wear them, mentioned the
name of their inventor with reverence as
one of the greatest benefactors to society.
Burke rarely appeared in public without
glasses. In Gillroy's cariactures, you sce
the mighty rhetorician with spectacles on
nose, and arms uplifted, hurling thuu-
derboldt of oloquence at tho members Of
the opposition.
If Spina, or somebody else, had not in
invented spectaclcs, Disraeli could not have
written "The Curiosities of Literature"
Wordsworth, in his later years, was greatly
bcholden to glasses. When Emerson saw
him, in 1888, he was dis6gured with green
goggles. Twas through a-pair of specta-
cles that Thackeray looked upon life life,
and saw and noted the sins and sorrows Of
"Vanity Fair" Franklin's spectacles, as
some biographer or other has remarked,
were the spcctaclcs Of q philosopher.
They were not such spectacles as were sold
by the opticians of London and Paris, but
were made expressly for him, according to
a theory Of his own. In travelling, he car
ried two pair OF glasses, ono for reading,
the other for surveying distant objects"
Franklin could have written eic1ucntly
of spectacles. They were the best ali:
most trusted friends of his vigorous and
beautiful oldage. He evidently took pride
in them, and loved to appear in tho gay
salons of Paris with "the spectacles Of
wisdom on his nose."-Atlantic Monthly
nsy- The distance between tho west end
Of Lake Superior and Seattle, on Puget
Sound, over the surveyed route OF tho
Northern Pacific Railroad, is l, ia miles.
sy- It proven that j. Russell Jones,
whose appointment to foreign mission
excited surnrise. rave Grant q hundred