“Thousands of artificial eyes are kept in stock,” said Mr. Merry, “but there is an advantage in making the eye to order. The slightest peculiarity in size, shape or color in the natural eye can be reproduced exactly in the artificial one.”
The foundation of the process of manufacture is a glass tube about three-fourths of an inch in diameter. The tubes vary slightly in color and in quality. Under the blowpipe a small portion of a tube is melted off and shaped into an eye. The color is put in by very delicate processes, and even any abnormal peculiarity of the natural eye is reproduced.
A young man was “sitting for an eye” this morning when a visitor called. Kohler, glancing alternately from the natural eye of the customer to the blowpipe and back again, quickly modeled an eye to fill that particular need.
“In many cases they have more than one eye made while they are at it,” said Mr. Merry. “Unless handled very carefully, the eyes are easily broken, either by falling or from sudden changes of temperature. Some persons are so careless with their glass eyes--they roll them around as though they were marbles. We had one customer in Kansas City who had twenty-four eyes made a year ago, and who already has broken five of them. But that is not the fault of the maker of the eyes.”
(Enough of the story is given here to indicate the method. Tell one thing that has been omitted. Note the absence of technical terms. The writer tells the things about the making of glass eyes that interested him and hence are most likely to interest the general reader. A technical description of the process would fall flat as a newspaper story. The lead--“eyes made while you wait”--piques the reader’s curiosity.)
III. A human-interest story told simply and in good taste. From the New York _World_:
Flowers, the smiles of his fiancée and the commendation of his superiors went with Patrolman George A. Pattison when he limped out of New York Hospital last night on crutches and with one leg gone.
Just two weeks ago Pattison lay on the sidewalk at Forty-second street and Fifth avenue, one leg badly crushed by a surface car, and smiled up at Deputy Commissioner Driscoll when that man patted his shoulder and said, “Too bad!”