In the same town the same _distinguished_ individual forced his way into the study of a reverend gentleman, and alarmed him by a similar prognostication. A pair of the “clarified crystals, ground by a peculiar process,” were purchased, price fifteen shillings. Afterwards, upon finding that one eye was irritated, and derived no assistance from the spectacles, the gentleman called upon the optician who had always previously supplied him, and was convinced of the trick which had been put upon him. They were common machine-worked glasses, each of a different focus, and neither of them suitable to his sight. Their proper price, sold in their proper place (viz., by hawkers, in the streets,) is one shilling per pair! A gentleman of Norwich, struck with the advantages promised by some extraordinary spectacles, paid two guineas for a pair of blue steel, with blue glasses, which were warranted pebbles,[10] and had the additional vexation to be severely censured by several friends, who complained that the fellow had fixed them with similar trash by representing that he (the gentleman) had said, “After you leave mine, do you go down past the Norfolk Hotel, and say I bid you to call on Mr. and Mrs. ——, to sell them spectacles such as I have bought.” This, of course, was a manœuvre of the cheat himself. A gentleman, of Tavistock, purchased a pair of silver spectacles, declared to be very fine pebbles, price thirty-five shillings; they were merely glass; and as he required a glass in an old pair of spectacles, the pompous hawker offered to _oblige_ him by putting one of his “clarified lenses” to match the focus: for this he charged five shillings and sixpence. It was two inches different in focal length to the original glass! which would have been properly matched, by any resident optician, for one shilling! One of the hawking tribe called at the residence of Major C——, near Hereford, and represented that M——, Esq., had ordered, on the previous day, two pairs of spectacles, and desired him to call upon his friend, the major, to suit him also. In this case the attack was parried; and, spite of the hawker’s vehement declaration, that the eyes were in a terrible state, he was dismissed, “to call again to-morrow.” Thus the major preserved his eyes, and saved his money. In the evening he saw his friend, and inquired if he had sent a fellow to his house with spectacles? “No,” was the reply, “but you sent him to _me_; for he came this afternoon, saying you had bought two pairs, and wished me to have some of the same kind; therefore, I bought two pairs, and paid him the price he said _you_ gave, viz., three pounds, ten shillings, though at first he wanted four guineas!”