Finder

“ Those months of unavailing search stood always out luridly in his memory, and because his search was a thing that could accommodate itself to no rule except to follow faint trails into all sorts of places, he grew to an astonishing familiarity with parts at least of the town whose boast it is that no man knows it. ”

“ And consider the joy of finding things you don't hope to find. You, sir, sitting at your spotless desk, with your ordered and labelled shelves about you, and your files and your letter-racks, and your card indexes and your cross references, and your this, that, and the other—what do you know of the delights of which I speak? You do not come suddenly and ecstatically upon the thing you seek. You do not know the shock of delighted discovery. ”

“ The more cautious searcher often follows with uncertain mind, and doubtless in his backward glances sees many fairer and heavier sheaves than those he bears with full arms, from the fruitful harvest. If, then, you do not find here dwelt on such geographical phases as you judge most important, attribute the fact I pray you, not to neglect, but to lack of observation, or to the exercise of an undiscriminating judgment. ”

“ If the object of search prove a phantom, in the wild scenes of a new and unexplored country there are other objects of interest; but if real, besides the glorious excitement of such a novelty, they will have something to look back upon through life. ”

“ There is one who understands their intent to be that the preferred practice is to search at night (Magen Avraham, comment 3) . This explanation does not suffice, since we already have seen established that searching by sunlight is for those who did not search at night [and why then the repetition?] ”

“ But perhaps the survey of a wider field may lead us to think that they contain in germ the solution of the problem. To that wider survey we must now address ourselves. It will be long and laborious, but may possess something of the interest and charm of a voyage of discovery, in which we shall visit many strange foreign lands, with strange foreign peoples, and still stranger customs. The wind is in the shrouds: we shake out our sails to it, and leave the coast of Italy behind us for a time. ”

“ Yet for the sake of the young and inexperienced, who may perchance infer—from the two simple instances I have given above, of the manner in which I should recognize my Father and my Sons—that Recognition by sight is an easy affair, it may be needful to point out that in actual life most of the problems of Sight Recognition are far more subtle and complex. ”

“ I think it was at this stage of our operations that each man began very seriously to doubt whether we were searching in the right place at all, and whether there might not be some further clue that was missing, and, without which, search would almost certainly be futile. ”

“ But there are two sorts of 'listing.' There is the listing which is the yielding to the mob of ignoble passions and clamant desires of the animal nature within us, and there is the 'listing' which is obeying the impulses of a higher will, that has been blended with ours. ”

“ If the investigator himself happens to be one of the characters in the life which he is examining, there opens before him the interesting alternative of actually putting himself back into that old personality, and feeling over again just what he felt in that ancient time. ”

“ We find that now, as in the days of the earliest physical speculations, all physical researches appear to converge toward the same point, and every inquirer, as he looks forward into the dim region toward which the path of discovery is leading him, sees, each according to his sight, the vision of the same quest. ”

“ For similar reasons it is a great aid in looking for an object to know what to look for; to be readily found, the object, though lost to sight, should be to memory clear. Searching is a mental process similar to the matching of a piece of fabric in texture or color, when one has forgotten the sample and must rely upon the remembrance of its appearance. If the recollection is clear and distinct, recognition takes place when the judgment decides that what the physical eye sees corresponds to the image in the mind's eye; with an indistinct mental image the recognition becomes doubtful or faulty. ”

“ At the same time the thoroughly unpractical searcher, who allows his attention to be distracted and does not confine himself to the strict object of his search, is constantly rewarded by the discovery of entries, quaint, amusing, or grimly significant, throwing a light upon the lives of men and women whose very names perished out of memory centuries ago. ”

“ Your discoverers that pass over land with hired guides must look well to them that they slip not from them, and for more assurance let them take a compass with them, and write down how far they go upon every point of the compass, for that country having no way or path, if that your guides run from you in the great woods or desert, you shall hardly ever find a passage back. ”

“ I must commence the search abroad at once. I shall go immediately to a skillful detective, whom I know from reputation, and put the case in his hands. What seems to us so alarming and incomprehensible, may be to a man of his experience simple and clear enough. We are too near the fact to see it truly in its proper light. This man I understand to be faithful and discreet, one who may be intrusted with the investigation of the most delicate affairs. ”

“ Though under very little fear of detection, as the entrance to our subterranean dwellings is known to no others but to ourselves, we have, nevertheless, thought it advisable to adopt some method of screening ourselves more effectually. ”

“ Several times we believed ourselves to be on the eve of discovery, and each time our expected triumph turned out to be a will-o’-the-wisp. Twice I journeyed to a distant town, feeling confident of meeting Miss Calmour. ”

“ But he won't set a detective on her track if she is never found—he persists in looking for her himself. He is wearing his life out in the search. If ever I saw death pictured on any face, I saw it in his when he was here last. ”

“ When people search in that way, unless they get discouraged, their search is apt to come to something; unless, indeed, they are going after a mirage, and it was no mirage that hovered before Esther,—no vision of anything, indeed ”

“ In other days, when a man stared or turned to gaze after me, I had attributed the attention to my looks; now I jumped to the conviction that he was a detective. And, in fact, I began to jump at anything. ”

“ But if the trained investigator turns his attention specially to any one scene, or wishes to call it up before him, an extraordinary change at once takes place, for this is the plane of thought, and to think of anything is to bring it instantaneously before you. ”

“ In such an extensive and distant survey, numerous subjects of inquiry, though not strictly nautical, will suggest themselves to your active mind; and though, from your transient stay at any other place, you will often experience the mortification of leaving them incomplete, yet that should not discourage you in the collection of every useful fact within your reach. ”

“ Their function is to keep together our organization on earth, and from them only an occasional member is selected, as you have been, to perform special duties in certain adventurous studies. Are you willing to go on this journey of exploration? and are you brave enough to meet the trials you have invited?"
Again my enthusiasm arose, and I felt the thrill experienced by an investigator who stands on the brink of an important discovery, and needs but courage to advance, and I answered, "Yes."
"Then, farewell; this archway is the entrance that will admit you into your arcanum of usefulness. ”

“ Man is prying into the secrets of your lives and habits, endeavoring to solve the mystery of your migratory flight. Where did you obtain the knowledge of the compass which enables you, after a journey of hundreds of miles, to find the very tree that last year held your nest? ”

“ Ought we to disappoint their hopes? Do you not all agree with me that it is our duty to go along the line my finger is pointing out at this moment on the map, and if after all we find I have been mistaken, still to keep straight on and follow the 37th parallel till we find those we seek, if even we go right round the world? ”

“ Let me go once, scanning my way with any earnestness of outlook, and successfully arriving, my footprints are an invitation to me a second time to go by the same way. It is easier than any other way: the industry of 'scanning' lies already invested in it for me ”

“ Or again if a modern hunter should have all the spoils of a certain hunt stuffed and mounted as a record of the hunt, this would be of the same nature—a whole object record collection with an object to stand for every individual. ”

“ IN WHICH THE READER IS SHOWN THE HABITS OF A NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL WE will now leave that little group with whom we have made our first exploration of these grey and ill-defined, but immensely important, regions of human thought and experiences. From the researchers we will turn to the researched. Come with me and we will visit Mr. Linden at home, and will examine the lights and shades which make up the life of a professional medium. ”

“ And as the oars of our little craft touch the water, every man's eyes are fixed in order [Pg 129] to catch sight of anything like the appearance of a missing person. A record of the missing, as well as the found, is kept at the station we have just left a mile or two down the river. Ten poor creatures remain yet to be discovered. ”

“ Presently another look-out, instructed by the first where to direct his eyes, also discovers the man; then another sees him, then another, and so on, till all who are aloft obtain sight of the desired object, and join in pointing with their hands to where it is to be found. ”

“ For the benefit of those contemplating acquiring a timber claim at any time in the future there is presented herewith the diagram of a section corner, exhibiting the customary witness trees and other evidence of exact locality, from the field notes of an official survey, a careful study of which will enable any person to readily determine whether he is on the land represented irrespective of what marks may be on the alleged section post. ”

“ A Discovery is, as the very word implies, a change from ignorance to knowledge, and thus to either love or hate, in the personages marked for good or evil fortune. The finest form of Discovery is one attended by Peripeties, like that which goes with the Discovery in _Oedipus_. ”

“ Success will depend, as in any such endeavor, upon intelligent excavation, careful collection of data, and accurate observation of specimens, but the investigator cannot hope to derive the best results from his labors if he does not hold to a very broad view of his field. ”

“ Scientific men may explore it—topographical officers may travel over it in safety with a troop at their heels—they may proclaim themselves the discoverers of the passes and the plains, the mountains and the rivers, the fauna and the flora—on their maps they may give them the names, first of themselves, then of their patrons, then of their friends, and, lastly, of their favourite dogs and horses. ”

“ THE original investigator in Nature's domains may not inaptly be likened to a pioneer who penetrates the primeval forest, and by the aid of his keen hatchet hews down the obstructions, marking out first a narrow path in the wilderness until he reaches a favorable camping-ground. ”

“ After a time, however, the attentive collector is rewarded by finding that a coherent whole is growing up in his or her mind out of the shreds and patches heard here and there, and it is delight indeed when your own dim suspicion that this part of the puzzle fits into that is confirmed by finding the two incidents preserved side by side in the mouth of some perfectly unconscious witness. ”

“ To search for any one wishing to remain concealed therein is like the proverbial attempt to look for a needle in a hay-stack, since a man can pass within ten yards of another without seeing him or being aware of his presence. ”

“ Looking out of the window, I see a man walking round Paper Buildings. Now suppose I say, after the fashion of the inspired detective of the romances, 'That man is a stationmaster or inspector,' that would be a guess. The observed facts do not yield the conclusion, though they do warrant a conclusion less definite and more general. ”

“ Such a co-operation of assimilations and complications is seen in the most striking manner in those processes of association which in ordinary life are called "recognitions," or, if the scope of the region of association over which the recognition stretches is indefinitely larger, are called "cognitions." We recognise, for example, an acquaintance, whom we have not seen for a long time. ”

“ I mean that for the most part investigators have nearly always been kept at arm's-length by the fiction that the 'guide' should control everything, that the séance is a religious rite, that the medium must not be touched nor exposed to the light, and so on, till [Pg 192] the scientist was reduced to the feeble rank of an on-looker in the dark, so that no real test was possible. ”

“ As soon, however, as the number of a man’s cattle or cocoanut trees, or the contents of his hunting bag got beyond his count (perhaps beyond the number of his fingers and toes) or he felt the need of sending a message of defiance, peace, or ransom to a neighboring tribe, or from a hunting party back to the cave or wigwam, he began to make visible records—objects, specimens, images, and conventional signs of one sort or another. ”

“ Explorers, fired by curiosity and the lure of the mysterious unknown, and hunters, fur traders, and squatters, following their own sweet wills, blazed the trail, opening paths and sending back stories of the new regions they traversed. ”