LEAF AND TENDRIL 



People who discourse pleasantly and accurately 

 about the birds and flowers and external nature 

 generally are not invariably good observers. In their 

 walks do they see anything they did not come out 

 to see? Is there any spontaneous or unpremedi- 

 tated seeing? Do they make discoveries? Any 

 bird or creature may be hunted down, any nest 

 discovered, if you lay siege to it; but to find what 

 you are not looking for, to catch the shy winks and 

 gestures on every side, to see all the by-play going 

 on around you, missing no significant note or 

 movement, penetrating every screen with your 

 eye-beams — that is to be an observer; that is to 

 have "an eye practiced like a blind man's touch," 

 — a touch that can distinguish a white horse from 

 a black, — a detective eye that reads the faintest 

 signs. When Thoreau was at Cape Cod, he noticed 

 that the horses there had a certain muscle in their 

 hips inordinately developed by reason of the in- 

 secure footing in the ever-yielding sand. Thoreau's 

 vision at times fitted things closely. During some 

 great fete in Paris, the Empress Eugenie and 

 Queen Victoria were both present. A reporter 

 noticed that when the royal personages came to sit 

 down, Eugenie looked behind her before doing so, 

 to see that the chair was really there, but Victoria 

 seated herself without the backward glance, know- 

 ing there must be a seat ready: there always had 

 been,. and there always would be, for her. The 

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