1 66 Idle Days in Patas;onia 



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fine myself to tlie subject of vision in savage and 

 semi-barbarous men as compared with ours.- 



Here again I recall an incident of my boyhood, 

 and am not sure that it was not this that first gave 

 me an interest in the subject. 



One summer day at home, I was attentively 

 listening, out of doors, to a conversation between 

 two men, both past middle life and about the same 

 age, one an educated Englishman, wearing spectacles, 

 the other a native, who was very impressive in his 

 manner, and was holding forth in a loud authorita- 

 tive voice on a variety of subjects. All at once he 

 fixed his eyes on the spectacles worn by the other, 

 and, bursting into a laugh, cried out, " Why do 

 you always wear those eye-hiding glasses straddled 

 across your nose ? Are they supposed to make a 

 man look handsomer or wiser than his fellows, or 

 do you, a sensible person, really believe that you 

 can see better than another man because of them ? 

 If so, then all I can say is that it is a fable, a delu- 

 sion ; no man can believe such a thinof." 



He was only expressing the feeling that all per- 

 sons of his class, whose lives are passed in the 

 semi-barbarous conditions of the gauchos on the 

 j^ampas, experience at the sight of such artificial 

 helps to vision as spectacles. They look through a 

 pane of common glass, and it makes the view no 

 clearer, but rather dimmer — how can the two 

 diminutive circular panes carried before the eyes 

 produce any other effect ? Besides, their sight as a 

 rule is good when they are young, and as they pro- 



