standing. This showed that the animal had lost a front tooth. The print in the sand made by one foot was a fainter impression than the others. By this I knew that he was lame in one foot.

FIRST MERCHANT. One question more, O judge. How could he know that the camel was laden with honey and wheat?

DERVISH. I noticed that a colony of ants was busy carrying away grains of wheat on one side of the path, and that flies were clustering thick along the other side.

JUDGE. Thou art very observant and very wise, O dervish. I pronounce thee innocent. Thou art free. Go in peace. As for ye, merchants, be not so hasty in your conclusions in future. Moreover, if ye will make as good use of your eyes as this dervish, ye will doubtless find your camel. Ye are dismissed!

Two men walk along the same road: one notices the blue depths of the sky, the floating clouds, the opening leaves upon the trees, the green grass, the yellow buttercups, and the far stretch of the open fields; the other has precisely the same pictures on his retina, but pays no attention to them. One sees and the other does not see; one enjoys an unspeakable pleasure, and the other loses that pleasure which is as free to him as the air.

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT

LEARNING BY OBSERVING

THE great use of a school education is not so much to teach

you things, as to teach you how to learn―to give you the noble art of learning, which you can use for yourselves in after life on any matter to which you choose to turn your mind.

And what does the art of learning consist in? First and foremost, in the art of observing. That is, the boy who uses his eyes best on his book, and observes the words and letters of his lesson most accurately and carefully, that is the boy who learns his lesson best.

As you well know, one boy will sit staring at his book for an hour, without knowing a word about it, while another will learn the thing in a quarter of an hour; and why? Because one has actually not seen the words. He has been thinking of something else, looking out of the window, repeating the words to himself like a parrot. The other has simply, as we say, "kept his eyes open." He has looked at the lesson with his whole mind, seen it and seen into it, and therefore knows all about it.

Therefore I say that everything which helps a boy's power of observation helps his power of learning; and I know from experience that nothing helps that so much as the study of the world about us, and especially of natural history: to be accustomed to watch for curious objects, to know in a moment when you have come upon anything new - which is observation; to be quick at seeing when things are like and when unlike which is classification. All

that must, and I know very well does, help to make a boy wide-awake, earnest, accurate, ready for whatever may happen.

When we were little and good, a long time ago, we used to have a jolly old book, called "Evenings at Home," in which was a great story called "Eyes and No Eyes"; and that story was of more use to me than any dozen other stories I ever read.

A regular old-fashioned story it is, but a right good one, and thus it begins:

"Well, Robert, where have you been walking this afternoon?' said Mr. Andrews to one of his pupils, at the close of a holiday. Oh, Robert had been to Broom Heath, and around to Campmount, and home through the meadows. But it was very dull; he hardly saw a single person. He would rather by half have gone by the turnpike road. "But where is William ?'

"Oh, William started with him, but he was so tedious, always stopping to look at this thing and that, that Robert would rather walk alone; and so went on.

"Presently in comes Master William, dressed, no doubt, as we wretched boys used to be forty years ago-frill collar and tight skeleton monkey-jacket and tight trousers buttoned over it, a pair of low shoes which always came off if we stepped into heavy ground; and terribly dirty and wet he is; but he never had such a pleasant walk in his life, and he has brought home a handkerchief full of curiosities.

"He has a piece of mistletoe, and wants to know what it

is, and has seen a woodpecker and a wheatear, and has gathered strange flowers off the heath, and hunted a pewit,

because he thought its wing was broken, till of course it led him into a bog, and wet he got; but he did not mind, for in the bog he fell in with an old man cutting turf, who told him all about turf cutting; and then he went up a hill, and saw a grand prospect, and because the place was called Campmount he looked for a Roman camp, and found the ruins of one; and then he went on and saw many other things, and so on and so on, till he had brought home curiosities enough and thoughts enough to last him a week.

"Mr. Andrews, who seems a sensible old gentleman, tells him all about his curiosities; and then it turns out that Master William has been over exactly the same ground as Master Robert, who saw nothing at all.

"Whereon says Mr. Andrews, wisely enough, in his solemn, old-fashioned way: 'So it is: one man walks through the world with his eyes open, and another with them shut; and upon this depends all the superiority of knowledge which one acquires over the other. I have known sailors who had been in all quarters of the world, and could tell you nothing but the names of the hotels, and the price and quality of tobacco. On the other hand, Franklin could not cross the English Channel without making observations useful to mankind.

"While many a vacant, thoughtless person is whirled through Europe without gaining a single idea worth crossing the street for, the observing eye and inquiring mind find mat

.

ter of improvement and delight in every ramble. Do you then, William, continue to make use of your eyes; and you, Robert, learn that eyes were given you to use.""

And when I read that story, as a little boy, I said to myself, I will be Mr. Eyes; I will not be Mr. No Eyes; and Mr. Eyes I have tried to be ever since; and Mr. Eyes I advise you, every one of you, to be, if you wish to be happy and successful. Ah! my dear boys, if you knew the idle, vacant, useless life which many young men lead when their day's work is done, continually tempted to sin and shame and ruin by their own idleness, while they miss opportunities of making valuable discoveries, of distinguishing themselves and helping themselves forward in life - then you would make it a duty to get a habit of observing, and of having some healthy and rational pursuit with which to fill up your leisure hours.

CHARLES KINGSLEY

THE SHELL

EE what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,

Lying close to my foot,

Frail, but a work divine,

Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl,

How exquisitely minute,

A miracle of design!