his neighbor's gate or door as unerringly as if he had the best
of eyes, but who would go many miles on an errand to a new part of the
country. He seemed to carry a map of the township in the bottom of his
feet, a most minute and accurate survey. He never took the wrong road,
and he knew the right house when he had reached it. He was a miller
and fuller, and ran his mill at night while his sons ran it by day. He
never made a mistake with his customers' bags or wool, knowing each
man's by the sense of touch. He frightened a colored man whom he
detected stealing, as if he had seen out of the back of his head. Such
facts show one how delicate and sensitive a man's relation to outward
nature through his bodily senses may become. Heighten it a little
more, and he could forecast the weather and the seasons, and detect
hidden springs and minerals. A good observer has something of this
delicacy and quickness of perception. All the great poets and
naturalists have it. Agassiz traces the glaciers like a _rastreador_;
and Darwin misses no step that the slow but tireless gods of physical
change have taken, no matter how they cross or retrace their course.
In the obscure fish-worm he sees an agent that has kneaded and
leavened the soil like giant hands.

One secret of success in observing nature is capacity to take a hint;
a hair may show where a lion is hid. One must put this and that
together, and value bits and shreds. Much alloy exists with the truth.
The gold of nature does not look like gold at the first glance. It
must be smelted and refined in the mind of the observer. And one must
crush mountains of quartz and wash hills of sand to get it. To know
the indications is the main matter. People who do not know the secret
are eager to take a walk with the observer to find where the mine is
that contains such nuggets, little knowing that his ore-bed is but a
gravel-heap to them. How insignificant appear most of the facts which
one sees in his walks, in the life of the birds, the flowers, the
animals, or in the phases of the landscape, or the look of the
sky!--insignificant until they are put through some mental or
emotional process and their true value appears. The diamond looks like
a pebble until it is cut. One goes to Nature only for hints and half
truths. Her facts are crude until you have absorbed them or
translated them. Then the ideal steals in and lends a charm in spite
of one. It is not so much what we see as what the th