Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1872-10-25
Tie Art OF Seeing.

from it, A capitalist makes his money
realize fifty per cent. per annum some.
times. But the miser's buried gold is
worth nothing, either as principal or in
terest. A coal-heaver has just as many
fingers as a matchmaker, but they are
not worth so much to him. The stage
driver in the mountains has as good eyes
and as clear vision as the artist who
rides on his box, but the artist sees more
in the hills in an hour than the driver has
seen in a lifetime The ears of ordinary
mortals are as good in their structure as
the ears of Beethoven in their best days,
but none of us can hear all that he heard.
Eyes, ears and fingers are capital capable
of improvement. The trouble is that
most men do not have right use of their
eyes or ears or fingers.
Some years ago Mr.. Beeener wrote a
series of ANONYMOUS articles, "By One
who keeps his Eyes and Ears open." 1t
was true description of the great preach
er, for if any man ever kept his eyes and
ears open to men, it is Henry Ward
Beecher. But the very title was lesson.
How few people ever keep their eyes and
ears open Sir Walter Scott said that
the secret of the knowledge of men
shown in his books was that he always
talked with his fellow travellers, whether
he had ever been introduced or not He
kept his eyes and ears open to human ma
ture. There were men in the stone-quar-
ries whose eyes were as good as Hugh
Miller's, but he was an oyen-eyed man,
and succeeded in reading the stones as
few learned men ever read them.
His eyes were open to the facts of ma
ture. Many a hunter shot birds beside
Audubon, but never a hunter saw birds
as he saw them, knowing the haunts
and habits of EACH There were
many men who were keen observers of
nature in the Empire of Brazil, but the
Emperor took great pains to import one
man with one pair of eyes, constructed
for all practical purposes, like any other
pair of normal eyes. The difference was
in the man who used them; for the world
learned more from the observations of
Agassiz in Brazil than from the sight see
ing of all other travellers.
The frontier guide has his eyes trained
SO that nothing of consequence to him in
journey or chase is missed. We have
known northwestern g0aGgeoLr who could
tell us whether it were fox or wolf made
a certain depression in the grass, his only
fore-paws had been folded under the body.
And the story of the lost camel, laden
with rice on the right side and honey on
the left, lame in the left fore-foot, and
blind in the right eye, which the dervish
described, without having seen, from the
birds who ate the spilled rice, and the
ants who ate the waste honey, and the
grass cropped always on the left side,
and the track of the limping foot, is a
very old story indeed, and illustrates the
of habit of observation. We
asked Northrup the guide what had beat
en- the ground under a plum-tree on the
banks of the Red River of the North, and
and he dropped on hands and knees and
studied the apparently inexplicable maze
of hoof-lines, ,sand then remarked that
dOeelk and her fawn had stood under
that tree the day before, fighting the flies.
The sea captain notes the sky, the botanist
reads the plants, the chemist is alive to
the smallest and most subtle indications of
a "trace" of something or other in his
analysis.
A professor of natural science once
said to US that his greatest difficulty lay
n teaching people to use their eyes. my
JUNIORS have never learned to see," said
ne. The great majority of people in this
world are deaf and blind, except for pur-
poses related in some way to the getting
If their living. Even educated people
10 not see. We teach our girls to read
Ind talk with correct accent, we train
our boys to track mathematical demon
stration; but seeing is lost art, known
TO our savage ancestors but forgotten by
is. The best seer of nature we have
ever had was Thoreau, who knew the
plants and the animals, the trees, the
'erns, the birds, and the insects of the
own of Concord. He looked them in the
ace as old acquaintances The farmers
ound that he knew their farms better
han they. Thoreau always believed that
le learned more in his hermitage on Wal
len Pond than in Harvard College. |
Books seem very necessary to us, but
Abraham was well-educated gentleman,
it to meet the best of us, and he had no
library. Abraham got his education from
he sky, the earth, the men he met. What
IN open-eyed, open cared, open -souled |
nan that old Bedouin chief, Abraham,
he Father of the Faithful, must have |
)een! He saw the planets, but be never |
vorshiped them He was the one man
If his day who could see without being
he slave of his senses. He felt that man |
vas greater than the earth and stars, and |
le worshiped only Him who made all. |
learning to read books is the door to all |
econd-hand knowledge; learning to see
md think are the doors to knowledge at |
irst-hand. and Home.