I was walking with one the other day in Hyde Park in London. He presently remarked "that horse is going a little lame"—there was no horse near us, but I found he was looking at one far away across the Serpentine: the next moment he picked up a peculiar button lying by the path. His eyes, you see, were looking both far away and near.
In the streets of a strange town a scout will notice his way by the principal buildings, and side-streets, and in any case he will notice what shops he passes and what is in their windows; also what vehicles pass him and such details as whether the horses' harness and shoes are all right; and most especially what people he passes, what their faces are like, their dress, their boots, and their way of walking, so that if, for instance, he should be asked by a policeman, "Have you seen a man with dark over-hanging eyebrows dressed in a blue suit, going down this street," he should be able to give some such answer as "Yes—he was walking a little lame with the right foot, wore foreign looking boots, was carrying a parcel in his hand, he turned down Gold Street, the second turning on the left from here, about three minutes ago."
Information of that kind has often been of greatest value in tracing out a criminal, but so many people go along with their eyes shut and never notice things.
In the story of "Kim," by Rudyard Kipling, there is an account of two boys being taught "observation" in order to become detectives, or scouts, by means of a game in which a trayful of small objects was shown to them for a minute and was then covered over and they had to describe all the things on it from memory.
We will have that game, as it is excellent practice for scouts.
There was a revolutionary society in Italy called the Camorra who used to train their boys to be quick at noticing and remembering things. When walking through the streets of the city, the Camorrist would suddenly stop and ask his boy—"How was the woman dressed who sat at the door of the fourth house on the right in the last street?" or, "What were the two men talking about whom we met at the corner of the last street but three?" or, "Where was the cab ordered to drive to, and what was its number?" "What is the height of that house and what is the width of its upper floor window?" and so on. Or the boy was given a minute to look in a shop window and then he had to describe all that was in it. Captain Cook, the great explorer and scout, was trained in the same way as a boy, and so was Houdin the great conjurer.
Every town scout should know, as a matter of course, where is the nearest chemist's shop (in case of accidents), the nearest police "fixed point," police-station, hospital, fire alarm, telephone, ambulance station, etc.
The scout must also have his eyes on the ground especially along the edge of the pavement against the houses or in the gutter. I have often found valuable trinkets that have been dropped, and which have been walked over by numbers of people, and swept to one side by ladies' dresses without being noticed.
How the wearing of a hat shows character.