“Or I put them on again, and looked at the wife.  How many stout trees I saw,—­how many tender flowers,—­how many placid pools; yes, and how many little streams winding out of sight, shrinking before the large, hard, round eyes opposite, and slipping off into solitude and shade, with a low, inner song for their own solace.  And in many houses I thought to see angels, nymphs, or at least, women, and could only find broomsticks, mops, or kettles, hurrying about, rattling, tinkling, in a state of shrill activity.  I made calls upon elegant ladies, and after I had enjoyed the gloss of silk and the delicacy of lace, and the flash of jewels, I slipped on my spectacles, and saw a peacock’s feather, flounced and furbelowed and fluttering; or an iron rod, thin, sharp, and hard; nor could I possibly mistake the movement of the drapery for any flexibility of the thing draped,—­or, mysteriously chilled, I saw a statue of perfect form, or flowing movement, it might be alabaster, or bronze, or marble,—­but sadly often it was ice; and I knew that after it had shone a little, and frozen a few eyes with its despairing perfection, it could not be put away in the niches of palaces for ornament and proud family tradition, like the alabaster, or bronze, or marble statues, but would melt, and shrink, and fall coldly away in colorless and useless water, be absorbed in the earth and utterly forgotten.

“But the true sadness was rather in seeing those who, not having the spectacles, thought that the iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue warm.  I saw many a gallant heart, which seemed to me brave and loyal as the crusaders sent by genuine and noble faith to Syria and the sepulchre, pursuing, through days and nights, and a long life of devotion, the hope of lighting at least a smile in the cold eyes, if not a fire in the icy heart.  I watched the earnest, enthusiastic sacrifice.  I saw the pure resolve, the generous faith, the fine scorn of doubt, the impatience of suspicion.  I watched the grace, the ardor, the glory of devotion.  Through those strange spectacles how often I saw the noblest heart renouncing all other hope, all other ambition, all other life, than the possible love of some one of those statues.  Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not the love to give.  The Parian face was so polished and smooth, because there was no sorrow upon the heart,—­and, drearily often, no heart to be touched.  I could not wonder that the noble heart of devotion was broken, for it had dashed itself against a stone.  I wept, until my spectacles were dimmed for that hopeless sorrow; but there was a pang beyond tears for those icy statues.

“Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in knowledge,—­I did not comprehend the sights I was compelled to see.  I used to tear my glasses away from my eyes, and, frightened at myself, run to escape my own consciousness.  Reaching the small house where we then lived, I plunged into my grandmother’s room and, throwing myself upon the floor, buried my face in her lap; and sobbed myself to sleep with premature grief.  But when I awakened, and felt her cool hand upon my hot forehead, and heard the low, sweet song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly told parable from the Bible, with which she tried to soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to steal a glance at her through the spectacles.