And, again, the results were spectacular, to put it mildly. The collection grew and grew and grew, and Nathanial Evergood was never wearier, or never happier. What an evil, obscene man he was!
Now, if Nathanial had stuck to his camera and to his wonderful invention, this story might never have been written. But, evil and obscene as he was, he soon began to dream of new worlds to conquer.
Simple as it had been to apply the principle of astigmatism to photography—and with such marvelous results—why not apply this same principle to his eyeglasses? This would eliminate the annoying delay of taking pictures, then developing and viewing them. To say nothing of the terrific expense involved.
Usually, when writers say, "No sooner said than done", it is often a gross exaggeration. But Nathanial was quick about it, nevertheless.
In short order, the problems of focus, image distortion and aberrations were ironed out, and Nathanial ventured once again out into the street to give his newest brain-child its dry-run, so to speak.
The glasses worked all right. They worked just fine. And Nathanial Evergood, in a leering ecstasy, raced up and down the streets, peering with his watery and overworked eyes this way and that, up and down, all around and back again. For the next day or so Nathanial was busy as a bee attending every beauty contest and fashion show in town, and even found time for a quick run out to the girl's school.
The third day following the initial tests of his new seeing-eye glasses, Nathanial suddenly observed there were an uncommon lot of nicely constructed young ladies right in his own department at the office. An opportunist, if ever there was one, Nathanial thought it just might be fun to give the remarkable spectacles a chance to separate the women from the girls, and the girls from the children.
This he did and although his work suffered, he spent the better part of the day classifying the office help in various categories, and learning there were at least two ladies who fell in no classification whatsoever. It was the nicest day he had spent at the office in quite some time, he decided.
Not long after that the strain brought on by the frequent changes from his normal reading glasses to the prism spectacles became so intense that he decided there was really no good reason why he shouldn't just wear them—the new ones, of course—all the time. The better to preserve his vision, and the better to pursue his avocation.