Knowledge and Inventions 



out a little helpful science ? Just think, father, 

 you cannot read your Bible without spec- 

 tacles, and millions of others are in the same 

 fix; and spectacles cannot be made without 

 some knowledge of the science of optics." 



"Oh!" he replied, perceiving the drift of the 

 argument, "there will always be plenty of 

 worldly people to make spectacles." 



To this I stubbornly replied with a quotation 

 from the Bible with reference to the time com- 

 ing when "all shall know the Lord from the 

 least even to the greatest," and then who will 

 make the spectacles? But he still objected to 

 my reading that book, called me a contuma- 

 cious quibbler too fond of disputation, and 

 ordered me to return it to the accommodating 

 owner. I managed, however, to read it later. 



On the food question father insisted that 

 those who argued for a vegetable diet were in 

 the right, because our teeth showed plainly 

 that they were made with reference to fruit 

 and grain and not for flesh like those of dogs 

 and wolves and tigers. He therefore promptly 

 I 243 1 



