Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1886 — GIRLS WHO WEAR GLASSES. [ARTICLE]

GIRLS WHO WEAR GLASSES.

A Boston Girl’s Experience With an ‘Oculist 1 of Repute—Fate Defied. Boston girls begin early to reflect the unmistakable Boston No - matter how giddy they begin, they end r by wearing a 'determined, independent, very recently-gloomed expression, as though their brains and their skin had just been sandpapered. The realy protty ones are finder 16, and wear their glossy hair in braids down their backs and sensible little suits with everything taut about them. Their complexions are fresh and rosy, their eyes bright and they have the air of perfect health. After 18, I regret to say, they are not so comely, unless heaven has intended they should eclipse their sister mortals and be known as “belles.” Either the Boston girl is a victim of inherited myopia or she early acquires a weakness of vision by too close application to books, for their reputation for being addicted to eye-glasses is too true. Half the girls I met wore them. “What does it mean,” I asked my companion, as a child of 10 passed by having on a pair of gold-bowed spectacles, “what does it mean that the eye-sight of Americans . should be so defective ? If this goes on, babies in arms will be wearing spectacles before they can talk.” , My friend then told me of her experience with a highly-reputed oculist whom she had consulted for an acute strain of the eyes several years ago. She was always near-sighted, inherited the difficulty, but only used glasses occasionally, One night she read by a flickering gas light and brought on a serious and painful inflammation of the eyeball. Various remedies were tried to allay the trouble without avail, and she then sent soy the oculist in question for advice. He examined her thoroughly; sat her staring into brilliant flame; shut her up in darkness; pulled up first one eyelid, then the other, and finally announced there was a grave inequality of vision, one eye was doing all the work and the other was losing its sight. To make a long story short, she was ordered not to look at a book or do any work of any kind for a month, and then he would write a prescription for spectacles. “Spectacles!” she cried; “no, indeed. If I must wear anything I shall wear eyeglasses.” The oculist smiled grimly and replied eyeglasses could not fit the vision. It was impossible for an optician to make them, and she would eventually be blind if she did not put on the spectacles. He had ordered them for a great many persons who took immense comfort with them now. But my friend is not Bostonese, and she said, “I’ll not join the spectacle brigade at whatever hazard.” She did rest her eyes and she cured them of the acute strain, and then she proceeded to an optician and ordered two pairs of eye-glasses—one to use at theaters and other places where she wished to see from a distance, the other pair to wear when reading. Neither to wear permanently. This was eight years ago, and she sti’l has her eyesight, and, in spite of what the oculist predicted, it is stronger than then, and she rarely has to use the second pair of eye-glasses. She declares that parents can not be too wary about inflicting this blemish on their children’s good looks; that half of the weak visions is caused by carelessness, and when once the glasses are put on they can never be taken off. —Boston Correspondence Albany Journal.