tless, unpremeditated seeing--the
quick, spontaneous action of his mind in the presence of natural
objects. Everybody sees the big things, and anybody can go out with
note-book and opera-glass and make a dead set at the birds, or can go
into the northern forests and interview guides and trappers and
Indians, and stare in at the door of the "school of the woods." None
of these things evince powers of observation; they only evince
industry and intention. In fact, born observers are about as rare as
born poets. Plenty of men can see straight and report straight what
they see; but the men who see what others miss, who see quickly and
surely, who have the detective eye, like Sherlock Holmes, who "get the
drop," so to speak, on every object, who see minutely and who see
whole, are rare indeed.

President Roosevelt comes as near fulfilling this ideal as any man I
have known. His mind moves with wonderful celerity, and yet as an
observer he is very cautious, jumps to no hasty conclusions.

He had written me, toward the end of May, that while at Pine Knot in
Virginia he had seen a small flock of passenger pigeons. As I had been
following up the reports of wild pigeons from various parts of our
own state during the past two or three years, this statement of the
President's made me prick up my ears. In my reply I said, "I hope you
are sure about those pigeons," and I told him of my interest in the
subject, and also how all reports of pigeons in the East had been
discredited by a man in Michigan who was writing a book on the
subject. This made him prick up his ears, and he replied that while he
felt very certain he had seen a small band of the old wild pigeons,
yet he might have been deceived; the eye sometimes plays one tricks.
He said that in his old ranch days he and a cowboy companion thought
one day that they had discovered a colony of _black_ prairie dogs,
thanks entirely to the peculiar angle at which the light struck them.
He said that while he was President he did not want to make any
statement, even about pigeons, for the truth of which he did not have
good evidence. He would have the matter looked into by a friend at
Pine Knot upon whom he could depend. He did so, and convinced himself
and me also that he had really seen wild pigeons. I had the pleasure
of telling him that in the same mail with his letter came the news to
me of a large flock of wild pigeons having been seen near the
Beaverkill in Sullivan County, New Y