Evening News (London), February 21, 1903
Perfection.
An American doctor says that defective eyesight has an enormous effect on the character, and that a more general use of spectacles would largely decrease crime.—Daily Paper.
Since the day when I first learned to toddle
There has never been much wrong with me.
I have always been reckoned a model
Of what a young fellow should be.
I suppose I’ve attained to perfection
As near as humanity can,
And I’m free to confess that I’ve gained my success
Because I’m a spectacled man.
Dispelled by my magical glasses,
Each criminal tendency flees;
My nature in beauty surpasses
All previous records with ease;
I seldom, if ever, have murdered,
Or stolen, or forged, or told lies;
In fact, I don’t long to do anything wrong,
Because I look after my eyes.
No sinful amusements delight me,
Recreations, if bad, I eschew,
In vain wicked people invite me
To handle the cards or the cue.
I know the true joys of existence,
For me life is couleur de rose;
Life can never be sad, things can never be bad,
While my glasses are perched on my nose.
Ye youths who twin lenses of crystal
Have up to the present disdained,
Consider how thus you have missed all
The qualities which I’ve explained.
Repent while there’s time for repentance,
Fly, fly to your oculist’s, do!
You may be, by-and-by, just as perfect as I,
If you’ll only wear spectacles too.
P. G. W.