Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/562

132 that he was sorry to see gentlemen hi such a situation, and the other to express a fear that the policeman was intoxicated.

"The section as with one accord declared with a shout of applause, that the invention was complete; and the president, much excited, retired with Mr. Coppernose, to lay it before the council. On his return,—"Mr. Tickle displayed his newly invented spectacles, which enabled the wearer to discern in very bright colors objects at a great distance, and rendered him wholly blind to those immediately before him. It was, he said, a most valuable and useful invention, based strictly upon the principle of the human eye.

"The president required some information upon this point. He had yet to learn that the human eye was remarkable for the peculiarities of which the honorable gentleman had spoken.

"Mr. Tickle was rather astonished to hear this, when the president could not fail to be aware that a large number of most excellent persons and great statesmen could see with the naked eye most marvellous horrors on West India plantations, while they could discern nothing whatever in the interior of Manchester cotton-mills. He must know, too, with what quickness of perception most people could discover their neighbor's faults, and how very blind they were to their own. If the president, differed from the great majority of men in this respect, his eye was a defective one, and it was to assist his vision that these glasses were made.

"Mr. Blank exhibited a model of a fashionable annual, composed of copper-plates, gold leaf, and silk boards, and worked entirely by milk and water.

"Mr. Prosee, after examining the machine, declared it to be so ingeniously composed, that he was wholly unable to discover how it went on at all.

"Mr. Blank.—Nobody can, and that is the beauty of it.

"Dr. Grummidge stated to the section a most interesting case of monomania, and described the course of