Chapter 22: Feeling Another's Pain
At age ten, Lizzie got eyeglasses for the first time. Looking at the mountains she uttered in amazement, “I didn’t know you could see individual leaves on trees.” About sixty years later, Lizzie got bifocals to help her read fine print and drive at night. When she got home and saw herself in a mirror, she uttered in amazement, “Wow, new glasses gave me a lot of new wrinkles!” New glasses helped Lizzie see the world as others do. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, while giving a speech, said: “Reading from speeches is a very tedious business, particularly for an old man that has to put on spectacles, and the more so if the man be so tall that he has to bend over to the light” from Bartleby.com ). From Lincoln’s point of view, he had three problems reading speeches—too old (he was forty-nine), too tall (he was six-foot-four-inches), and too little light. Too much light wa...