case."

I paused, and shook my head slowly. If I had not been so much in
earnest, I think I should have been tempted to laugh outright. I had
begun my talk with him half jestingly, with the amusing idea of breaking
through his shell, but I now found myself tremendously engrossed, and
desired nothing in the world (at that moment) so much as to make him see
what I saw. I felt as though I held a live human soul in my hand.

"Say, partner," said the road-worker, "are you sure you aren't--" He
tapped his forehead and began to edge away.

I did not answer his question at all, but continued, with my eyes fixed
on him:

"It is a peculiar sort of blindness. Apparently, as you look about, you
see everything there is to see, but as a matter of fact you see nothing
in the world but this road--"

"It's time that I was seein' it again then," said he, making as if to
turn back to work, but remaining with a disturbed expression on his
countenance.

"The Spectacles I have to sell," said I, "are powerful magnifiers"--he
glanced again at the gray bag. "When you put them on you will see a
thousand wonderful things besides the road--"

"Then you ain't road-worker after all!" he said, evidently trying to be
bluff and outright with me.

Now your substantial, sober, practical American will stand only about
so much verbal foolery; and there is nothing in the world that makes him
more uncomfortable--yes, downright mad!--than to feel that he is being
played with. I could see that I had nearly reached the limit with him,
and that if I held him now it must be by driving the truth straight
home. So I stepped over toward him and said very earnestly:

"My friend, don't think I am merely joking you. I was never more in
earnest in all my life. When I told you I was a road-worker I meant it,
but I had in mind the mending of other kinds of roads than this."

I laid my hand on his arm, and explained to him as directly and simply
as English words could do it, how, when he had spoken of oil for his
roads, I thought of another sort of oil for another sort of roads, and
when he spoke of curves in his roads I was thinking of curves in the
roads I dealt with, and I explained to him what my roads were. I have
never seen a man more intensely interested: he neither moved nor took
his eyes from my face.

"And when I spoke of selling you a pair of spectacles," said I, "it was
only a way of telling you how much I wanted to make you see my kinds of
roa