16 THE ALERT EYE. 



even by a look or an inflection of the voice that 

 one's acquaintances are culpably ignorant, and so 

 one often resorts to a little strategy, if not hypo- 

 critical pretense, to disguise one's real feelings. 

 But such moralizing is scarcely to the point. I am 

 glad to say that not all our husbandmen are so 

 untutored in nature's lore ; for I have gleaned 

 many an odd and interesting scrap of information 

 on bird-life from intelligent farmers, and have 

 found them acute observers, even when they knew 

 nothing about systematic ornithology. A little 

 time spent in the study of some department of 

 natural history by our agricultural friends, would 

 certainly enrich their lives, relieving them of hum- 

 drum and helping to keep them from becoming 

 narrow and sordid. Every man, I maintain, should 

 have some useful recreative study which he may 

 pursue at odd times. It is an old saying, I know, 

 but true nevertheless, that " all work and no play 

 make Jack a dull boy," and we might with pro- 

 priety add, make his father a duller man. It is a 

 law of ethics that the play-spirit is inherent in 

 every one of us, whether we be young or old, and 

 no man ought to ignore it ; it is one of God's 

 voices in human nature. 



In the last analysis it is the alert mind that 



