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Show I "S": om? a Blast Blew in the Wall , mirror and WJ ' '-' :. I VTi i of the New York Subway I SySSifi - md Tore Out Miss I ed all hopes of I " Sophie's Left Eye and , U I ed Her Cheek ) "'m somg a-milhing, air." the said. : '" 1' ' HI "My face ts my fortune, sir' she said jj V' v'' ' TT wasa year ago last February, Pretty I Miss Sophie Wesch closed her type-'j type-'j Writer desk, put her little coat and I hat, swung her fur piece over her shoulders, drew on her gloves, said good j nlp,ht to the others in the office, stepped !' oiif into the street and down into the I N( w York subway In the first train bound for Brooklyn, j where Miss Wesch lives, she fook a B at and opened her evening newspaper But her attention flagged from the big head-j head-j 11m B and she let the paper rest on her lap as she turned thoughtfully on her elbow and watched the lights ot the subway tunnel flash by the window. Which of the half a dozen young men who were at- tentlve to her would really make the best husband? she pondered. H Miss Wesch was eighteen years old, of ; a very trim figure and attractive features. HI She little dreamed that in another moment HI Ihe hand ot fate was to mark her face Hl with cruel scars which would end her air castle hopes for the future. 1 Crash! Hfl The car trembled es if shaken by a HI giant hand. HI A spatter of glass, a stinging blow, a I sharp pointed thrust in her eft eye, and .Miss Wesch passed away In a swoon. A blast sot off by the men of a building build-ing company laying a foundation neat Bowling Green in lower Broadway had pierced the thin wall of the subway tunnel, had driven the masonry through the windows of the car and a splinter of glass had entered Uio un- fortunate girl's eye, while a section of the metal window frame cut a deep gash across her cheek. ( A little later, when the girl awoke to consciousness in the Broad Street Hospital, she learned that her left eye f was gone and that her face would be ( marked with a livid 6car for the rest of her life. Through her attorney, Mr. William S. Butler, of Brooklyn, the girl has brought suit against tho Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company. The Foundation Company, and Todd, Irons & Robertson, the builders, in the Supreme Court, asking for $250,000 for the damages she received that day 4n that BUbway car. Is a quarter of a million dollars dol-lars too much for a young girl to nsk for such injuries to her face" Miss Wesch herself her-self tells why she thinks this amount is not too much, but is, indeed, a poor compensation compen-sation for the loss she has sustained. 'I had before me a charming pictufe )f Norma Talmadge, her body browned ,vith cocoanut butter and oil and scan ily draped as a slave girl, but with all :his attractiveness of figure who would ;ver think of casting her for a motion aicture role if one of her eyes stared lead, lifeless and repellant from an empty eye-socket?" station when there came a noiso as though some great building had been struck by a torpedo and was falling to pieces. Then the ground shook about us. The car trembled as an animal does when It is frightened. I heard screams. Then a noise of breaking glass. And then something like a fork with points of fire entered my left eye! I Bhrieked in agony. Ever thing grew black. My life seemed to go out. I awoke In the Broad Street Hospital. A dot tor w as examining my eye. Ho shook his head. 'Too bad," he snld. "It must come out " I began to weep A cone was placed over my nose. I inhaled something of a queer, cloying sweet ners. It seemed to me that I was on a train dashing away at tremendous speed. I could hear the grinding grind-ing and rumbling of the wheels. Then again I sank into blackness. When I awoke once more I felt very weak, as though I had been ill for a long time. There was a bandage over my left eye. The other felt strained and weak. Memory came slowly back I recalled what the doctor had said. "Nurse," I cried. "Have they taken out my eye?" She nodded, pityingly. I lay there for a little trying to flrht hack realization of how different my life must be henceforth from that of other girls. I would no longer be as other girls are. I would be the "one-eyed girl." the "girl with the glass eye." I could bear them calling me those two names. I sobbed so that I frlghte tied the nurse. Sho called the' doctor and ho gave me something some-thing to make me sleep and forget for a while that forever afterward I would bo unlike all the girls I knew My nurse tried to comfort me. She said that after a whil the pain would pass from what had been my eye. She said that what was now a wound would become a socket and that in it would be placed "an artificial eye that will look very well." Look very well! Even then I knew better. And it wasn't tho physical pain that was bothering me. It was the ache In my heart. For whnt Is a girl's verv greatest charm? Isn't it hT eyes? Of course it Is. How many poems havo been written about them? Tom Moore sings of "thp light that lies in woman's eyes" that was his soul's undoing. And the (Cl 1U. Iaumitional 1'rtU.r ferric. Inc. ' ryv; "I looked at the won- tHilt fcV'.Hi R. derful eyes of beautiful Marion Davies, and no- J Bgr M body had to tell me that J W jgD if she had my glass eye v' 1 I in the place of her own lovely left eye whafB ! r'jr a sad disfigurement it would be." "I looked about my room and gazed at the picture of pretty Gloria Swanson and wondered what motion picture director would ever bother with her if one of those eyes was glass." cynic has parodied It: "The light that lies in woman a eyos and lies and lies and lies." Well tho light that would lie in a glass eye would be nothing to undo any soul, that I felt sure. Nor would anyone ever sorrow over its lies. Someone once Bpoke, too, of the "come hither" look that was a girl's most Irresistible Irre-sistible weapon. Can you imagine a "come hither" look in a glass eye? A man makes love with his tongue. A girl makes love with her eyes. Fancy a girl trying to make love with one eye! It would be like a machine with half its power on. or a one-legged man trying to race! I had had the chances for happiness of every other girl. Now they were gone. I nought of the other girls .n my own walk of life, business women whom the offico boys dared to call "stenogs." Yet how many Of them bad chanced their station. They had married "the Boss" or a friend of "the Boss." Instead of going to work every day in the subway they went shopping shop-ping In their limousines. Instead of dragging drag-ging through tho northern Winter, counting count-ing the days until Spring brought some-tiling some-tiling of balmlness, they went to Palm Beach. Instead of gallery seats at a Saturday maiinee they had a box at the opera. I knew I COUld n"ver be as Miss Hermione Bronleben, the girl employed In th.' American Surety offices, who married Qrcat Brlutn BUt't Hetentd her "Boss." Had she looked at him with a glittering stare in one eye he would not havo been drawn toward her. A glittering, glassy stare never attract- ed anyone unless un-less it were a magpie! Miss was no prettier than I, but she became Mm. Rutherford Ruther-ford Hamilton Towner. Because Be-cause she could answer his love with two bright eyes, hers wa-i a hundred per cent look Mine is a fifty per cent look less than that, because be-cause the eftcct of the false oye neutralizes whatever charm is loft i. ,1.,-. 1 1, . Sir Hngo Cunllffe Owen married his stenographer and gave her $4,000,000 for a wedding gift. Would he have done so if one of her eyes had been of glass9 I remembered the thrill the story of Gertrude Greeley's marriage to Samuel Raynor Whiting gave me His father was the millionaire Congressman and paper manufacturer of Holyoke, Mass. He dldn t lose caste because he married his stenog rapher, Instead, he became the secretary of the company Another story with a thrill In it was that of Mrs Francis Edgar Talcott, who lived just around the corner from the Vanderhllts and the Oelrlchs, on Fifty seventh street. There was a fashionable fash-ionable preacher of Pittsburgh who married his stenographer. It was he who married Evelyn Nesbltt and Harry Thaw in his study. Frank T Bailey, vice-president of tho Title Trust & Guaranty Com pany of Brooklyn, married his typewriter girl. Ex-Senator George B. Smith had married the girl who worked for him in an , office at No. 277 Broadway. But none of those girls had to operate In Cupid's court with a glass eye. It wasn't alone the stenographers who had a wooing chance to wed their "boss." Tho artists. William Chaso and Howard Chandler Christy, and Henry Hutt, had married their models. So bad Philip Boileau. But all these girls had two eyes and kn"v bOW to use them. i And aside from the prospects of matti mony. what now aro my chances of doBu something pn the -t i.-' or in motlKr pictures as many a girl has an ambitloaji try and perhaps succeed? As I looked at myself in tho mirror am studied that Talse eye and horrid SCSH realized that that cruel bla.st had ndM blasted all hopes for a carer i 'i t : e stmml or in the movies. W I looked about my room and gi2ed w the picture of pretty Gloria Swanson al r-wonl r-wonl 1 m fllred : ' would ewr bother with Ivt ii ono of tho A-eyes A-eyes was glass. j f I looked at the wonderful eyes of fl tfful Marlon Davies. and nobody had to id k me that if she had my glass eye fl place of her on lovi ly left eve w hiatal "" disfigurement It would be. - J I had before mo a charmlnc pfcturej Norma TaJmadge, her body browneflB cocoanut butter end oil and s antlly dfKV as a slave girl, hut with all this harmj -' hf for a motion picture w . ir n-e- nf ier 6fl stared dead. In-'!'' . and repellant 'r8i. an empty eye socket? 1 Other girls had sustained inj'irfr inaj ' dents and had received something by tM of compensation. Miss Catherine MafHfc twenty-year-old stenographer, had recehB ' $55,000 for a crack d thu-h i me. Bftf Florence Rooney, another typistH awarded $-10,000 for a broken lee;.- Mil Roonoy could never dance again. norOH.-1 She Walk Without B crutch, certainly out a limp. But neither of th-m ru- f : inr- the that I did. I should receive w hut I uW for, four or five times as much SS JHJ 7 For I lost half my sight and all ray hflfl 7 and Interest In life No more can I know the power that YM In a girl's glan e. A man will not wrV and blush under a glance of glass. I hSB, lost my power to charm, and whfflfl woman has lost that she wants to Ievl , I will r ei ive no more look of adSHl tlon I will be . tared nt lm! I will anfM know what I. I)' -hind that stare. 1 "What is it give ih..t slrl suchapeCOM expression? Is it boldness? No. JJ f glass eye" and the young man Sfl bpei thinking this will move out of jfSYMVMfJ of that Immovab'p gaze M Does anv of this sound trivial to TJIB -X. P.. ( ve " I.: of the weightiest s'HEr canee to me. Over all lb - the n suffering. Ocullfli 1 and some laymen '" C that wh.-n on-' " affection may bo some degree comnujiB cate ItsHf to tho other eye. I ma,AVASJ become blind. . f(J JSP I'm not sure that It wouldn't N DeVfl for mo. msW U I hope I ha-c y.-oved to vou inw L juarter of a millbm dollars Is not too H to ask for a girl's eye. |