know you can't by
guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on
experimenting until you find out that you can't find out. And it is
delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. If
there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to
find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find
out and finding out, and I don't know but more so. The secret of the
water was a treasure until I GOT it; then the excitement all went away,
and I recognized a sense of loss.

By experiment I know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers, and
plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence you
know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply knowing
it, for there isn't any way to prove it--up to now. But I shall find a
way--then THAT excitement will go. Such things make me sad; because by
and by when I have found out everything there won't be any more
excitements, and I do love excitements so! The other night I couldn't
sleep for thinking about it.

At first I couldn't make out what I was made for, but now I think it was
to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy and thank
the Giver of it all for devising it. I think there are many things to
learn yet--I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying too fast I
think they will last weeks and weeks. I hope so. When you cast up a
feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw
up a clod and it doesn't. It comes down, every time. I have tried it and
tried it, and it is always so. I wonder why it is? Of course it
DOESN'T come down, but why should it SEEM to? I suppose it is an optical
illusion. I mean, one of them is. I don't know which one. It may be
the feather, it may be the clod; I can't prove which it is, I can only
demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a person take his
choice.

By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last. I have seen
some of the best ones melt and run down the sky. Since one can melt,
they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same
night. That sorrow will come--I know it. I mean to sit up every night
and look at them as long as I can keep awake; and I will impress those
sparkling fields on my memory, so that by and by when they are taken
away I can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and
make them sparkle again, and double them by the blu