favorable periods for the cultivation of this faculty. Not only is the
mind then more free from care, and, therefore, more at leisure to
observe, but it is also more easy to interest one's self in the common
things, which, while they lie nearest to us, make up by far the greater
portion of our lives. Experience also proves that a person is not a good
observer at the age of twenty, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he
will never become one. "The student," says Hugh Miller, "should learn to
make a right use of his eyes; the commonest things are worth looking at;
even the stones and weeds, and the most familiar animals. Then in early
manhood he is prepared to study men and things in a way to make success
easy and sure."

Houdin, the magician, spent a month in cultivating the observing powers
of his son. Together they walked rapidly past the window of a large toy
store. Then each would write down the things that he had seen. The boy
soon became so expert that one glance at a show window would enable him
to write down the names of forty different objects. The boy could easily
outdo his father.

The power of observation in the American Indian would put many an
educated white man to shame. Returning home, an Indian discovered that
his venison, which had been hanging up to dry, had been stolen. After
careful observation he started to track the thief through the woods.
Meeting a man on the route, he asked him if he had seen a little, old,
white man, with a short gun, and with a small bob-tailed dog. The man
told him he had met such a man, but was surprised to find that the
Indian had not even seen the one he described. He asked the Indian how
he could give such a minute description of a man whom he had never seen.

"I knew the thief was a little man," said the Indian, "because he rolled