Of all the senses, that of seeing is the most noble, commanding and useful. It enables us to perceive thousands of objects at a glance, with their forms, colors, and distance.
The mechanical structure of the eye is very curious, but I shall not describe it now. It is sufficient to say that light is the great instrument by which vision is performed. This is supposed to consist of innumerable particles, inconceivably small, which proceed in straight lines from every part of luminous or shining bodies. These fly with a velocity ten million times as swift as a cannon ball, for they come from the sun to the earth in eight minutes!
These rays of light enter the ball of the eye at the pupil; and at the bottom of a cavity in the ball, called the retina, a little picture is painted of every object placed before the eye. It is this little picture that enables us to see; and we see distinctly, or otherwise, as this is clear or obscure. A very curious thing is, that this picture paints everything reversed, that is, upside down. The reason why we do not, therefore, see things upside down, is a matter that has puzzled greater philosophers than Bob Merry.
Merry’s Adventures.
CHAPTER XXII.
The book shop in which I was now a clerk, was not like the present Broadway establishments of Appleton, or Wiley & Putnam—a vast hall, with almost endless successions of shelves, and these loaded with the rich and varied volumes of the American and English press. No indeed! it was a little shop in Pearl street, stocked with Webster’s Spelling Books, Watts’s Psalms and Hymns, Young’s Night Thoughts, Webster’s Third Part, the American Preceptor, and other works of a popular kind, and designed for general use. There were no Rollo works—there was no Peter Parley then!
Mr. Cooke was a very sharp man in trade. His whole soul was bent on making money. He cared nothing for books, except for the profit he made upon them. For a few days he left me to myself, but then he began to try to make me as much interested in the business as he was. But this was a vain attempt. My thoughts were always somewhere else, and often when he spoke to me I did not hear him. I was constantly making blunders. In casting accounts I got everything wrong; I credited Mr. Lightfoot with books that should have been charged; I sent off to a customer a lot of Peregrine Pickle, instead of Young’s Night Thoughts; and at last, taking the inkstand for the sand-box, I dashed a puddle of ink over the ledger!
This was the crisis of my fate. Never in all my days have I seen such another sight as poor Mr. Cooke’s face. Astonishment, indignation, fury, were in his countenance all at once. At last he broke out: “What have you done? Oh you unlucky dog! Get out of my house; get out of my sight! Oh my poor, dear ledger! Here’s a pretty kettle of fish! Get out of my sight! Get a piece of newspaper; fetch some water; run to the house and get a cloth! Oh dear, dear, dear! what shall I do! Oh Robert Merry—Robert Merry!” Here the poor man was entirely out of breath. I got the things he wanted, took my hat and walked into the street.
I passed along quite rapidly for some time, hardly knowing what I was about. In the tempest of my mind I walked rapidly, and was soon in a remote part of the city. The time passed insensibly away, and it was evening before I was aware of it. As I was walking through a dark and narrow street, I heard a voice behind me, and a clatter as of many persons running with all their might. The din drew nearer and nearer, and soon I distinguished the cry of “Stop thief! stop thief!” In a moment a young man rushed by me, and at a little distance several men came pressing in hot pursuit. I was seized with a sudden impulse, whether of fright, I cannot say, but I ran with all my speed. I was, however, soon overtaken, and rudely seized by the collar by a man, who exclaimed, “Well, rascal, I have got you at last!”
“Let go of me,” said I, “I am no rascal.”