I have learned a number of things, and am educated, now, but I wasn’t at first.  I was ignorant at first.  At first it used to vex me because, with all my watching, I was never smart enough to be around when the water was running uphill; but now I do not mind it.  I have experimented and experimented until now I know it never does run uphill, except in the dark.  I know it does in the dark, because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course, if the water didn’t come back in the night.  It is best to prove things by actual experiment; then you know; whereas if you depend on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get educated.

Some things you can’t find out; but you will never know you can’t by guessing and supposing:  no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can’t find out.  And it is delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting.  If there wasn’t anything to find out, it would be dull.  Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out, and I don’t know but more so.  The secret of the water was a treasure until I got it; then the excitement all went away, and I recognized a sense of loss.

By experiment I know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers, and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply knowing it, for there isn’t any way to prove it—­up to now.  But I shall find a way—­then that excitement will go.  Such things make me sad; because by and by when I have found out everything there won’t be any more excitements, and I do love excitements so!  The other night I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it.

At first I couldn’t make out what I was made for, but now I think it was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy and thank the Giver of it all for devising it.  I think there are many things to learn yet—­I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying too fast I think they will last weeks and weeks.  I hope so.  When you cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw up a clod and it doesn’t.  It comes down, every time.  I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so.  I wonder why it is?  Of course it doesn’t come down, but why should it seem to?  I suppose it is an optical illusion.  I mean, one of them is.  I don’t know which one.  It may be the feather, it may be the clod; I can’t prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a person take his choice.

By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last.  I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky.  Since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same night.  That sorrow will come—­I know it.  I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can keep awake; and I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory, so that by and by when they are taken away I can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again, and double them by the blur of my tears.