THE MANUFACTURE OF EYES.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 560, 28 September 1869, Page 3

THE MANUFACTURE OF EYES.

A French paper gives us some curious details on the manufacture of false eyes in Paris. The average sale per week of eyes intended for the human head amounted to 400. One of the leading " ocularists " receives one in a magnificent saloon resplendent with gildings and mirrors. His servant has but one eye, and if you want to see the effect of one of the eyes, he rings the bell and tries the eye in the servant's head, so that you may judge of the effect it will produce in your own. He charges from 40f to 50f per eye. For the poor there are second-hand visual organs, which have been worn by some eyeless Duke or Nabob for a year, and exchanged for a new one after twelve months' service. These are then sold to the poorer classes at a reduced price, or sent off to America, India, or the Sandwich Islands, where the colored race are not quite so fastidious as regards the match. One of the Emperor Souloque's generals heard of these artificial eyes, and wrote to Paris to order one. The ocularist thought that a successful one would secure him one of the ILiytian crosses, devoted his utmost intelligence to the production of a chef d'ceuvre. Six months elapsed ; a small box reached him from Hayti. A cross glittered in his imagination, when lo ! to his horror, within folds of cotton, lay his original eye, accompanied by the following note : —" Sir, —The eye you sent me is of a tint that resembles the Spanish flag, and I am too patriotic to wear any but the color of my country." The ocularist proceeded at once to the Adniirality, and he there ascertained the colors of the Haytian flag, and at once manufactured a scarlet and green eye which he forwarded to him by the earliest opportunity. Timothy says the first time he went a courting, he felt as if a pink angel bad hauled him down a rainbow with a piece of chain lightning smack into a pile of down.