near-sighted, so that the
only things I could study were those I ran against or stumbled over.
When I was about thirteen I was allowed to take lessons in taxidermy
from a Mr. Bell, a tall, clean-shaven, white-haired old gentleman, as
straight as an Indian, who had been a companion of Audubon's. He had
a musty little shop, somewhat on the order of Mr. Venus's shop in "Our
Mutual Friend," a little shop in which he had done very valuable work
for science. This "vocational study," as I suppose it would be called
by modern educators, spurred and directed my interest in collecting
specimens for mounting and preservation. It was this summer that I got
my first gun, and it puzzled me to find that my companions seemed to see
things to shoot at which I could not see at all. One day they read aloud
an advertisement in huge letters on a distant billboard, and I then
realized that something was the matter, for not only was I unable to
read the sign but I could not even see the letters. I spoke of this to
my father, and soon afterwards got my first pair of spectacles,
which literally opened an entirely new world to me. I had no idea how
beautiful the world was until I got those spectacles. I had been a
clumsy and awkward little boy, and while much of my clumsiness and
awkwardness was doubtless due to general characteristics, a good deal of
it was due to the fact that I could not see and yet was wholly ignorant
that I was not seeing. The recollection of this experience gives me
a keen sympathy with those who are trying in our public schools and
elsewhere to remove the physical causes of deficiency in children,
who are often unjustly blamed for being obstinate or unambitious, or
mentally stupid.

This same summer, too, I obtained various new books on mammals and
birds, including the publications of Spencer Baird, for instance, and
made an industrious book-study of the subject. I did not accomplish
much in outdoor study because I did not get spectacles until late in the
fall, a short time before I started with the rest of the family for a
second trip to Europe. We were living at Dobbs Ferry, on the Hudson. My
gun was a breech-loading, pin-fire double-barrel, of French manufacture.
It was an excellent gun for a clumsy and often absent-minded boy. There
was no spring to open it, and if the mechanism became rusty it could be
opened with a brick without serious damage. When the cartridges stuck
they could be removed in the same fashion. If