uneral
processions; life pictures of successes and failures, of the
discouraged, the despondent, the cheerful, the optimist and the
pessimist, passed in quick succession and stamped themselves on the
brains of his eager hearers.

Wherever he went, Beecher continued his study of life through
observation. Nothing else was half so interesting. To him man was the
greatest study in the world. To place the right values upon men, to
emphasize the right thing in them, to be able to discriminate between
the genuine and the false, to be able to pierce their masks and read
the real man or woman behind them, he regarded as one of a clergyman's
greatest accomplishments.

Like Professor Agassiz, who could see wonders in the scale of a fish or
a grain of sand, Beecher had an eye like the glass of a microscope,
which reveals marvels of beauty in common things. He could see beauty
and harmony where others saw only ugliness and discord, because he read
the hidden meaning in things. Like Ruskin, he could see the marvelous
philosophy, the Divine plan, in the lowliest object. He could feel the
Divine presence in all created things.

"An exhaustive observation," says Herbert Spencer, "is an element of
all great success." There is no position in life where a trained eye
can not be made a great success asset.

"Let's leave it to Osler," said the physicians at a consultation where
a precious life hung by a thread. Then the great Johns Hopkins
professor examined the patient. He did not ask questions. His
experienced eye drew a conclusion from the slightest evidence. He
watched the patient closely; his manner of breathing, the appearance of
the eye,--everything was a telltale of the patient's condition, which
he read as an open book. He saw symptoms which others could not see.
He recommended a certain operation, which was performed, and the
patient recovered. The majority of those present disagreed with him,
but such was their confidence in his power to diagnose a case through
symptoms and indications which escape most physicians, that they were
willing to leave the whole decision to him. Professor Osler was called
a living X-ray machine, with additional eyes in finger tips so familiar
with the anatomy that they could detect a growth or displacement so
small that it would escape ordinary notice.

The power which inheres in a trained faculty of observation is
priceless. The education which Beecher got through observation, by