Reserve power is magnetic.  It does not consist in giving the idea that you are holding something in reserve, but rather in the suggestion that the audience is getting the cream of your observation, reading, experience, feeling, thought.  To have reserve power, therefore, you must have enough milk of material on hand to supply sufficient cream.

But how shall we get the milk?  There are two ways:  the one is first-hand—­from the cow; the other is second-hand—­from the milkman.

The Seeing Eye

Some sage has said:  “For a thousand men who can speak, there is only one who can think; for a thousand men who can think, there is only one who can see.”  To see and to think is to get your milk from your own cow.

When the one man in a million who can see comes along, we call him Master.  Old Mr. Holbrook, of “Cranford,” asked his guest what color ash-buds were in March; she confessed she did not know, to which the old gentleman answered:  “I knew you didn’t.  No more did I—­an old fool that I am!—­till this young man comes and tells me.  ’Black as ash-buds in March.’  And I’ve lived all my life in the country.  More shame for me not to know.  Black; they are jet-black, madam.”

“This young man” referred to by Mr. Holbrook was Tennyson.

Henry Ward Beecher said:  “I do not believe that I have ever met a man on the street that I did not get from him some element for a sermon.  I never see anything in nature which does not work towards that for which I give the strength of my life.  The material for my sermons is all the time following me and swarming up around me.”

Instead of saying only one man in a million can see, it would strike nearer the truth to say that none of us sees with perfect understanding more than a fraction of what passes before our eyes, yet this faculty of acute and accurate observation is so important that no man ambitious to lead can neglect it.  The next time you are in a car, look at those who sit opposite you and see what you can discover of their habits, occupations, ideals, nationalities, environments, education, and so on.  You may not see a great deal the first time, but practise will reveal astonishing results.  Transmute every incident of your day into a subject for a speech or an illustration.  Translate all that you see into terms of speech.  When you can describe all that you have seen in definite words, you are seeing clearly.  You are becoming the millionth man.

De Maupassant’s description of an author should also fit the public-speaker:  “His eye is like a suction pump, absorbing everything; like a pickpocket’s hand, always at work.  Nothing escapes him.  He is constantly collecting material, gathering-up glances, gestures, intentions, everything that goes on in his presence—­the slightest look, the least act, the merest trifle.”  De Maupassant was himself a millionth man, a Master.