The President is a born nature-lover, and he has what does not always go with this passion--remarkable powers of observation. He sees quickly and surely, not less so with the corporeal eye than with the mental. His exceptional vitality, his awareness all around, gives the clue to his powers of seeing. The chief qualification of a born observer is an alert, sensitive, objective type of mind, and this Roosevelt has in a preeminent degree. You may know the true observer, not by the big things he sees, but by the little things; and then not by the things he sees with effort and premeditation, but by his effortless, unpremeditated seeing--the quick, spontaneous action of his mind in the presence of natural objects. Everybody sees the big things, and anybody can go out with note-book and opera-glass and make a dead set at the birds, or can go into the northern forests and interview guides and trappers and Indians, and stare in at the door of the "school of the woods." None of these things evince powers of observation; they only evince industry and intention. In fact, born observers are about as rare as born poets. Plenty of men can see straight and report straight what they see; but the men who see what others miss, who see quickly and surely, who have the detective eye, like Sherlock Holmes, who "get the drop," so to speak, on every object, who see minutely and who see whole, are rare indeed. President Roosevelt comes as near fulfilling this ideal as any man I have known. His mind moves with wonderful celerity, and yet as an observer he is very cautious, jumps to no hasty conclusions.