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