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