That is the difference between them.
ABOUT GLASS.
Glass is so common and so cheap that we never think of being grateful for it. But if we had lived a few centuries ago, when the richest people had only wooden shutters to their windows, which, of course, had to be closed whenever it was cold or stormy, making the house as dark as night, and had then been placed in a house lighted by glass windows, we would scarcely have found words to express our thankfulness. It would have been like taking a man out of a dreary prison and setting him in the bright world of God's blessed sunshine. After a time men made small windows of stones that were partly transparent; and then they used skins prepared something like parchment, and finally they used sashes similar to ours, but in them they put oiled paper. And when at last glass came into use, it was so costly that very few were able to buy it, and they had it taken out of the windows and stored carefully away when they went on a journey, as people now store away pictures and silver-plate.
Now, when a boy wants a clear, white glass vial for any purpose, he can buy it for five cents; and for a few pennies a little girl can buy a large box of colored beads that will make her a necklace to go several times around her neck, and bracelets besides. These her elder sister regards with contempt; but there was a time when queens were proud to wear such. The oldest article of glass manufacture in existence is a bead. It has an inscription on it, but the writing, instead of being in letters, is in tiny little pictures.
Here you see the bead, and the funny little pictures on it. The pictures mean this: "The good Queen Ramaka, the loved of Athor, protectress of Thebes." This Queen Ramaka was the wife of a king who reigned in Thebes more than three thousand years ago, which is certainly a very long time for a little glass bead to remain unbroken! The great city of Thebes, where it was made, has been in ruins for hundreds of years. No doubt this bead was part of a necklace that Queen Ramaka wore, and esteemed as highly as ladies now value their rubies. It was found in the ruins of Thebes by an Englishman.