“Made us wear spectacles!” replied the Indian, sternly.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you not heard about it?”
“No; you know I have been away in Chili for some time, and am ignorant of much that has been going on in these parts.”
“There is in Spain a white man, I know not who,” said Tiger, with an expression of ineffable contempt, “but he must be the chief of the fools among the white men, who seem to me to be all fools together.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” said Pedro, with a laugh.
“This white fool,” continued Tiger, paying no regard to his friend’s interruption, “thought that he would send out here for sale some spectacles—glass things, you know, that old white men look through when they cannot see. We Indians, as you know, never need such things. We can see well as long as we live. It is supposed that a mistake was made by some one, for something like a canoe-load of spectacles was sent out—so many that in a hundred years the white men could not have used them up. The trader knew not what to do. There was no sale for them. He applied to the governor—that robber of whom I have spoken. He said to the trader, with a wink of his eye—that sort of wink which the white fool gives when he means to pass from folly to knavery—‘Wait,’ he said, ‘and you shall see.’ Then he issued an order that no Indian should dare to appear in his district, or in church during festival-days, without spectacles! The consequence was that the spectacles were all sold. I know not the price of these foolish things, but some white men told me they were sold at an enormous profit.”
Although Pedro sympathised heartily with his brown friend in his indignation, he could not quite repress a smile at the ridiculous ideas called up. Fortunately the Indian failed to interpret an upside-down smile, particularly with the moustache, as it were, below instead of above the mouth, and a cigarette in the lips. It was too complicated.
“And were you obliged to buy and wear a pair of these spectacles, Tiger?” asked Pedro, after a few silent puffs.
“Yes—look! here they are,” he replied, with inconceivable bitterness, drawing forth the implements of vision from his pouch and fixing them on his nose with intense disgust. Then, suddenly plucking them off; he hurled them into the river, and said savagely—“I was a Christian once, but I am not a Christian now.”