earer the truth to say that none of us sees with perfect understanding
more than a fraction of what passes before our eyes, yet this faculty of
acute and accurate observation is so important that no man ambitious to
lead can neglect it. The next time you are in a car, look at those who
sit opposite you and see what you can discover of their habits,
occupations, ideals, nationalities, environments, education, and so on.
You may not see a great deal the first time, but practise will reveal
astonishing results. Transmute every incident of your day into a subject
for a speech or an illustration. Translate all that you see into terms
of speech. When you can describe all that you have seen in definite
words, you are seeing clearly. You are becoming the millionth man.

De Maupassant's description of an author should also fit the
public-speaker: "His eye is like a suction pump, absorbing everything;
like a pickpocket's hand, always at work. Nothing escapes him. He is
constantly collecting material, gathering-up glances, gestures,
intentions, everything that goes on in his presence--the slightest look,
the least act, the merest trifle." De Maupassant was himself a millionth
man, a Master.

"Ruskin took a common rock-crystal and saw hidden within its stolid
heart lessons which have not yet ceased to move men's lives. Beecher
stood for hours before the window of a jewelry store thinking out
analogies between jewels and the souls of men. Gough saw in a single
drop of water enough truth wherewith to quench the thirst of five
thousand souls. Thoreau sat so still in the shadowy woods that birds and
insects came and opened up their secret lives to his eye. Emerson
observed the soul of a man so long that at length he could say, 'I
cannot hear what you say, for seeing what you are.' Preyer for three
years studied the life of his babe and so became an authority upon the
child mind. Observation! Most men are blind. There are a thousand times
as many hidden truths and undiscovered facts about us to-day as have
made discoverers famous--facts waiting for some one to 'pluck out the
heart of their mystery.' But so long as men go about the search with
eyes that see not, so long will these hidden pearls lie in their shells.
Not an orator but who could more effectively point and feather his
shafts were he to search nature rather than libraries. Too few can see
'sermons in stones' and 'books in the running brooks,' because they are
so used to seei