lamp. With what am I enjoying the
glorious radiance: with my mouth or my eyes? That is the question put
by my budding scientific curiosity. Reader, do not smile: the future
observer is already practicing and experimenting. I open my mouth wide
and close my eyes: the glory disappears. I open my eyes and shut my
mouth: the glory reappears. I repeat the performance, with the same
result. The question's solved: I have learnt by deduction that I see the
sun with my eyes. Oh, what a discovery! That evening, I told the whole
house all about it. Grandmother smiled fondly at my simplicity: the
others laughed at it. 'Tis the way of the world.

Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neighboring bushes, a sort of
jingle attracted my attention, sounding very faintly and softly through
the evening silence. Who is making that noise? Is it a little bird
chirping in his nest? We must look into the matter and that quickly.
True, there is the wolf, who comes out of the woods at this time, so
they tell me. Let's go all the same, but not too far: just there, behind
that clump of groom. I stand on the look out for long, but all in vain.
At the faintest sound of movement in the brushwood, the jingle ceases.
I try again next day and the day after. This time, my stubborn watch
succeeds. Whoosh! A grab of my hand and I hold the singer. It is not a
bird; it is a kind of Grasshopper whose hind legs my playfellows have
taught me to like: a poor recompense for my prolonged ambush. The best
part of the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy flavor,
but what I have just learnt. I now know, from personal observation, that
the Grasshopper sings. I did not publish my discovery, for fear of the
same laughter that greeted my story about the sun.

Oh, what pretty flowers, in a field close to the house! They seem to
smile to me with their great violet eyes. Later on, I see, in their
place, bunches of big red cherries. I taste them. They are not nice
and they have no stones. What can those cherries be? At the end of the
summer, grandfather comes with a spade and turns my field of observation
topsy-turvy. From under ground there comes, by the basketful and
sackful, a sort of round root. I know that root; it abounds in the
house; time after time I have cooked it in the peat stove. It is the
potato. Its violet flower and its red fruit are pigeonholed for good and
all in my memory.

With an ever watchful eye for animals and plants, the future observe