BEHIND THE EYE. 115 



perhaps, and when he takes his afternoon 

 saunter he looks at the bushy hillside, or at 

 the wayside cottage, or down into the loi- 

 tering brook, and he sees in them all such 

 pictures as they never showed him before. 

 Or he is in a matter-of-fact mood, a kind of 

 stock-market frame of mind ; and he looks 

 at everything through economical specta- 

 cl es? as if he had been set to appraise the 

 acres of meadow or woodland through which 

 he passes. At another time he may have 

 been reading some book or magazine article 

 written by Mr. John Burroughs ; and al- 

 though he knows nothing of birds, and can 

 scarcely tell a crow from a robin (perhaps 

 for this very reason), he is certain to have 

 tantalizing glimpses of some very strange 

 and wonderful feathered specimens. They 

 must be rarities, at least, if not absolute 

 novelties ; and likely enough, on getting 

 home, he sits down and writes to Mr. Bur- 

 roughs a letter full of gratitude and inquiry, 

 the gratitude very pleasant to receive, 

 we may presume, and the inquiries quite 

 impossible to answer. 



Some men (not many, it is to be hoped) 

 are specialists, and nothing else. They are 



