Fidelity,  therefore,  can  be  only
assured  by  acquiring  the  art  of  ob-
servation, which  further  assists  in
filling  the  mind  with  stored  experi-
ence. I  am  quite  sure  that  most  men
never  see  anything  at  all.  I  have
known  men  who  have  even  gone  all
44


THE  ART  OF  FICTION

round  the  world  and  seen  nothing —
no,  nothing  at  all.     Emerson   says,
very  truly,    that  a   traveller   takes
away  nothing  from  a  place   except
what  he  brought  into  it.     Now,  the
observation  of  things  around  us  is  no
part  of  the  ordinary  professional  and
commercial  life  ;  it  has  nothing  at  all
to  do  with  success  and  the  making  of
money ;  so  that  we  do  not  learn  to
observe.    Yet  it  is  very  easy  to  shake
people  and  make   them   open  their
eyes.      Some   of  us   remember,   for
instance,   the    time  when    Kingsley
astonished  everybody  with   his   de-
scriptions of  the  wonders  to  be  seen
on  the  seashore  and  to  be  fished  out
of  every  pond  in  the  field.    Then  all
the  world  began  to  poke  about  the
seaweed  and   to   catch   tritons  and
keep  water-grubs  in  little  tanks.     It
45


THE  ART  OF  FICTION

was  only  a  fashion,  and  it  presently
died  out ;  but  it  did  people  good,
because  it  made  them  understand,
perhaps  for  the  first  time,  that  there
really  is  a  good  deal  more  to  see
than  meets  the  casual  eye.  At  pre-
sent, the  lesson  which  we  need  is  not
that  the  world  is  full  of  the  most
strange  and  wonderful  creatures,  all
eating  each  other  perpetually,  but
that  the  world  is  full  of  the  most
wonderful  men  and  women,  not  one
of  whom  is  mean  or  common,  but  to
each  his  own  personality  is  a  great
and  awful  thing,  worthy  of  the  most
serious  study.
