h to kill
the power of observation in me.

It may be that observation is an essentially transitory quality, a
fleeting ancestral reminiscence, a trail of glory, like other savage
traits in children. But more than now survives might be preserved to us
by training at school. It ought not to be possible for a boy to come up
to a University so blind and helpless as to describe a wall-flower (which
has six obvious stamens arranged in a striking pattern) as having "about
five stamens." Yet this I experienced in an examination of medical
students. Describing an object placed before him is excellent training
in observation for a boy. And the capacity of describing an object by
memory should also be cultivated. Remember what Dr. Noel says in
Stevenson's story of the Saratoga Trunk, and how we may fail in a
question of life and death because we cannot describe the mysterious
stranger who dogs our footsteps.

To return for a moment to the description of an object. It not only
practises the power of observation, but is also excellent exercise in
writing English, far better as it seems to me than the usual essay on the
usual subjects. In describing a given object the pupil has not to seek
for material--it is there before him. He need not recall his feelings
during a country walk, or the way he spent his time in the Christmas
holidays, or vainly search for facts on the character of Oliver Cromwell.
He can concentrate on arrangement, on directness and clearness. My
experience of the essays set to candidates in the Natural Science Tripos
was most depressing. A man who could write a good plain answer to an
ordinary examination question becomes ornate and tiresome when he is told
to write an essay. Such candidates have clearly never heard the
admirable statement by Canon Ainger of the style expected in writers in
the Dictionary of Natural Biography, "No flowers by request." Nor can
they have known that other bit of advice, "You have no idea what strength
it gives to your style to leave out every other word." I have heard
suggested another method of checking the natural diffuseness of the
youthful essayist, namely, to make him confine himself to a definite
number of words, I have even heard an essay on a post card recommended.

For myself, I believe the best exercise in English I ever had was the
correction of my father's proof-sheets. What I found so educational was
the necessity of having to explain clearly and exactly