THROUGH MY SPECTACLES IX 



lay open a few, a very few, of these uncut pages, which 

 I have learned by heart, that a " little may be read," 

 even as we run. I would give at least one worthy mo- 

 tive for a stroll for every day in the year storm or 

 shine, summer or winter conscious that in thus seeing 

 through my spectacles my proselytes will surely rejoice 

 in their conversion. 



As to the assumptive tone of my title, I would add a 

 few words. The term " sharp eyes " is, after all, but 

 relative. There are degrees of sharpness of vision even 

 as there are degrees of blindness. An eye may be 

 "sharp" for birds but blind to botany; keen for Indian 

 arrow-heads and dull to entomology, but never omni- 

 scient ; or, as Thoreau figuratively but forcibly puts it, 

 "a man absorbed in the study of grasses tramples down 

 oaks unwittingly in his walks." 



Thus, if the expression of these pages shall appear 

 somewhat pedagogic, the critical reader will bear in 

 mind that they were not intended for the scientist nor 

 zoologist, nor, of course, for eyes sharper than my own 

 in these especial fields. Prompted originally by the 

 numerous juvenile correspondence, and prepared for the 

 columns of a young people's journal, any inference of 

 conscious didacticism in the author may perhaps best 

 be met in the apology of the old Roman proverb: "Inter 

 caecos regnat luscus" among the blind, a one-eyed man 

 is king. Indeed, are we not all relatively blind? Is not 

 the "sharpest eye" continually reminded of how blind 

 it was but yesterday? 



Truly speaks " Fra Lippo Lippi :" 



" We're made so, that we love 



First, when we see them painted, things we have passed 

 Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see " 



an axiom which needs no emphasizing, being borne out 

 in every one's experience. Many of these " things we 



