82 A SHARP LOOKOUT. 



fence are enough to give him the clew. He sees 

 the half-obliterated foot-prints of a thief in the sand, 

 and carries the impression in his eye till a year after- 

 ward, when he again detects the same foot-print in the 

 suburbs of a city, and the culprit is tracked home and 

 caught. I knew a man blind from his youth who not 

 only went about his own neighborhood without a guide, 

 turning up to 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 custom- 

 ers' bags or wool, knowing each man's by the sense of 

 touch. He frightened a colored man whom he de- 

 tected 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 de- 

 tect hidden springs and minerals. A good observer 

 has something of this delicacy and quickness of per- 

 ception. All the great poets and naturalists have it. 

 Agassiz traces the glaciers like a rastreador, and Dar- 

 win 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 



