A SHARP LOOKOUT 



press in the terms of our own consciousness, 

 but ceaseless experiments in every possible 

 direction. The only thing inexplicable is 

 the inherent impulse to experiment, the 

 original push, the principle of Life. 



The good observer of nature holds his 

 eye long and firmly to the point, as one 

 does when looking at a puzzle picture, and 

 will not be baffled. The cat catches the 

 mouse, not merely because she watches for 

 him, but because she is armed to catch him 

 and is quick. So the observer finally gets 

 the fact, not only because he has patience, 

 but because his eye is sharp and his inference 

 swift. Many a shrewd old farmer looks upon 

 the milky way as a kind of weathercock, and 

 will tell you that the way it points at night 

 indicates the direction of the wind the fol- 

 lowing day. So, also, every new moon is 

 either a dry moon or a wet moon, dry if a 

 powder-horn would hang upon the lower 

 limb, wet if it would not ; forgetting the 

 fact that, as a rule, when it is dry in one 

 part of the continent it is wet in some other 

 part, and vice versa. When he kills his 

 hogs in the fall, if the pork be very hard and 

 solid he predicts a severe winter ; if soft and 

 loose, the opposite ; again overlooking the 



