Well—I have been to church once more!—on a week-day, not on a Sunday; but I am deeply thankful for it. I went slowly crawling along in the donkey-chair, the wheels of which would have creaked less had they received a not very expensive greasing with a little dripping. The ride shook me a good deal, and the boy kept worrying the donkey with a little stick that did no good, and only made it obstinate. They who would quicken a donkey’s paces must observe the law of judicious kindness. I felt rather bewildered and scant of breath when I was in church: there were not a dozen persons in it, and the few voices sounded faint and hollow. I was hardly capable of more than a general emotion of thankfulness; but the service was very short; and by waiting till every one else had left the church, I escaped salutations.
——Miss Burt has just looked in.
“I saw you!” said she. “You need not think to creep into any corner where I shall not spy you out! Well, I congratulate you with all my heart; and I hope that now you have once begun, you will keep it up. Nothing worth doing, is to be done without a little effort; and if I were never to go out but when I felt inclined, I might stay at home all my life. Of course you saw the memorial window?”
“No, I did not look about—”
“Not see the window! Why, it was immediately in front of you! You could not have helped seeing it!”
“Then of course I did see it; but I did not observe it.”
“My mother taught me at a very early age,” said Miss Burt dryly, “to observe everything. So that now I never go into a church, or room, or pantry, without seeing everything in it at a glance—and remembering it too. It is a faculty that may be acquired: and therefore should be. This was the way in which Robert Houdin taught his son to exhibit what passed for second-sight. He used to take the child up to a shop-window—the next minute take him away. ‘Now, Robert, what did you see?’—‘Two work-baskets, ten penwipers, six whizzgigs.’—‘No, you didn’t.’—‘Yes, I did.’—They go back again. The child proves right. The boy, by cultivating the faculty, had become quicker than his father. He took in at a glance the whole contents of a shop. And applied this habit so dextrously before a crowded audience, that things which they did not believe he saw, or had seen, he described accurately. The consequence was, that his father realized immense profits.”
She paused to take breath.
“I think, however,” said I, “that there are times when such a faculty may be supposed to lie dormant.”