The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1873-11-07
The Habit of Attention.

0On Acb your m1hoS S0I 1n6l
the ruts, boys. If you have evel
travelled over country roads in the
spring you know how hard it Is
to get the wheels out of deer
tracks, when once you have turn
ed into them. Just so it is with
iyour minds. You need to give
them freer range. Have always
on hand some really valuable book
quite outside your ordinary pur
suits, and read a little in it every
day. Read ten pages attentive.
| ". rather than twenty carelessly
Learn to pick up knowledge every
where. a good newspaper will
give you many valuable thoughts
which you may as well save as not
if you will but turn them over q
time or two in your mind. It is
reflection that makes an idea our
own.
i You are accustomed to think OF
| Charles Dickens as wonderful
genius. Yet he says of himself
"My own invention, or magma
ton would never have served as it
has, but for the habit of common
place, humble, patient, daily, toll
ing, drudging attention" If Dick
ems career would not have been
a;success without this habit, you
may be quite sure yours will.not.
The principle applies to every 9th
efzpursuit as well as to authorship.
Which will you decide to do, go
about with your eyes open, or with
them shut? The wide-awake boy
is known and appreciated, and so
is the boy of small attachments
and few ideas, but the difference is
far more marked when they be-
come men.
Who does not know plenty of
dull, dozy-looking men, who will
come in and sit by your fire half
an evening and never advance
three ideas? They have none out
side of a very limited range of
daily drudgery. They are like
snails in their Shells. and al be-
cause they have gone through life
with their brows bent down to the
ground seeing, nothing above or
beyond this little furrow. Heads
up, boys, and eyes open. Learn
something worth knowing every
day of your life and think it over
at night, that you may imprint it
deeply on your memory-Ex.
How THEY TRAIN SHEEP Docs IN
CALIFoRNIA.-Rev. G. E. Babb, in
one of his letters from California,
tells of what an old shepherd told
him about the way they train the
famous shepherd dogs in southern
California. He says you may go
over the plains and hills there for
miles and see thousands of sheen,
but not a man to watch them.
Around each flock or band of say
q thousand sheep are half a dozen
dogs of peculiar breed-dogs
whose progenitors were imported
from the sheep pastures of the old
world. These dogs take the entire
care of the sheep, drive them out
to~pasture in the morning, keep
them from straying during the
day, and bring them home at night.
| These dogs have inherited a talent
for keeping sheep, but the shep-
herds do not depend wholly on
that. They cultivate it in this
way-so at least the old shepherd
says: "When a lamb is born it is
taken away from the mother sheep
before she has seen it, and pup
Ply put in its place. The sheep
suckles the puppy and learns to
love it. When the puppy grows
old enough to eat meat it is fed in
the morning and sent out with the
sheep. It stays with them because
it is accustomed to be with its
mother, but it cannot feed with
them. AS they get full the dog
gets hungry. At length, inpa-
tient to return where it hopes to
get another piece of meat, it be-
gins to tease and worry its mother,
and finally starts her toward home;
the other sheep follow, and thus
the whole flock is brought in. If
the dog brings the sheep home
too soon, or comes home without
them, he gets no supper, or is
punished in some way. Hence he
soon learns when to come, and to
see to it that none of his charge
are cleft behind. These animals
are trained by taking advantage
of their instincts and appetites."