Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1879-04-16
Rub Your Glasses

| Are the eyes OF any OF our readers at that
stage when, from long use, they need assis-
tance in their more difficult work No
blame to the eyesi What other instrument
is there which so well endures the strain of
half a century's continuous worki For it
is somewhere near life's fiftieth year that
this stage is reached by the eyes. Are you
not little awkward in the use of the new
Instrument You hold out good while,
till it was a question at length of arm, al
most as much as shortness of sight Do
not you feel as if you ought to make a little
explanatory statement before you produce
it, for the first time, in company You
have been, just to save your eyes, ''using
glasses in private, your wife perhaps. or
your husband, resenting it as a piece of af-
fectation, and Kindly pooh pOoing the idea
of age making them necessary to you But
they are necessary; and it will be great
relief to you when you are known to use
them, and their appearance evokes neither
surprise nor comment But that is neither
here nor there. We refer to the new eX-
perience in using the glasses, and its most
valuable suggestiveness. You find now
and then that type is indistinct; the objects
are dim or blurred; the eye does not de-
fine; and you learn to take off the glasses,
and with the clean handkerchief
clear the lenses, and lOl the lines grow
sharp. and the vision is distinct. 1t is easy
for you and me, friend to perform this me
chanical process: but there is its counter
part in the minds eye, which is more i'm
portant and immensely more difficult. In
this thing we can see the want in our neigh
boris glasses more readily than in our own;
so we shall look to theirs. All men have
their weaknesses, all except you and |, dear
reader, and a few of our most intimate
friends. Let us look for our facts where
they can be found
Some men, for example-not of course,
in our set-have prejudices, through which
they look. Somehow they have what they
facetiously call judgments on certain mat
ters, and nothing will shake their judg-
ments. To be sure, the Judgment came be-
fore the argument. They are the very re-
verse of the honest and candid criminal
who, when asked, ''Guilty or not guilty 2"
naively said, ''IIow can | tell till hear the
evidencei" They see all that appertains
to these matters through colOring or cOnfus-
ing matter. They should rub their glasses.
We can see that. but they do not; for, as
some one shrewdly says, what is sight or
observation to a good sound prejudice
Self-love dulls the minds perceptions, es-
pecially if wounded. The wounded part is
always abnormally sensitive. Men do not
like their class to be censured- You and |
do not like-beg pardOn-other men do not
like the connections of anything or anybody
that strikes, OF has struck, or might, could,
or would, strike at them. The Stafford
shire boor-the story is familiar, but vener-
abe-killed the unoffending gosling on the
roadside. The farmers wife resented it,
and demanded, .'Why l"-'.An' whoi,
was the reply, did goOse-chick's father
nibble Oii" 1t is dangerous for any gos-
ling to be connected with an ancestor that
has obeyed native instinct and ''nibbled"
Doors on the roadside. Present enjoyment
has the same Obscuring tendencies. You
and | read ''Billiards" on a window, and
we have visions that are not pleasant of
gambling, drinking, hapless homes, sun
pleasantness," wasted lives, and gloomy
deaths But those fine young fellows in
side, with their coats of, under the shaded
lamps, they see nothing of these horrors.
They think YOU and me -fogies, and only
for politeness' sake would call us ''old
women"