THINGS WE DON'T NOTICE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2399, 22 February 1900, Page 65

THINGS WE DON'T NOTICE.

(Globe.)

Was it not Sherlock Holmes who convicted Dr Watson of obtuseness because he had climbed hundreds of times up a particular flight of stairs without noticing that there were 19 of them. It was an unfair test, because nobody ever dreams of counting any steps except those of the Monument, and nobody ever goes up the Monument except inquiring strangers and enthusiastic provincials. But it exemplifies as well as anything the lack of observation to be found in all men except the detectives of fiction. There is a certain intimate ch'ele of things which is, so to speak, inside the range of scrutiny. . . .

The Stair Question would have baffled Solomon himself. There is not one Englishman in a thousand who knows howmany steps connect the ground floor of his house with the first floor. The onlyframe of mind in which one would be disposed to study the question would be that of Cetewayo, who found the ways of civilisation come fairly easy to him with the one exception of getting downstairs. He was not accustomed to that mode of descent, and his progress was so gingerly that if he had counted one by one the successive stages of his ordeal one could hardly have blamed his trepidation. Even he, in all probability, would have been puzzled as to the first and last step — whether to count them both or neither, or which of the two. precisely as the similar question of the relation of the year 1900 to the nineteenth century is perplexing toany unthinking arithmeticians even now. Similarly. Herr Baby, who still itnanceuvres stairs after the primitive quadrupedal fashion, is more likely to he informed on the point than his papa. Only, of course, Herr Baby cannot count ; and so we have the pitiable spectacle of the computation of the household staircase consigned to absolute neglect because he who is likely to acquire the information cannot count, while he who can count is not in a. position to acquire it. A watch is a fairly familiar object ; and if you were asked whether the numbers on the face of it corresponded to the Roman numerals you would no doubt say "yes." Yet if you will take out your watch and look at the symbol for four, you will observe that it is not the customary IV — a- difference which it probably never occurred to you to notice before. Or, again, can you say how many buttons you have on your waistcoat? This, as the advertisements say, is no cotch: there is no aroma 'of the Herring and the Half about it. It means what it says. The 'average tailor is accustomed bo sew on the average waistcoat a certain number of buttons : the precise number he knows, but how many of his customers? Lay your hand on you) 1 heart, well to the left, 'o masculine reader, and say, keeping your eye.i in front, whether five, or six, or seven is the number of buttons that front you every day IE your staircase consisted of only three steps, no Sherlock Holmes could corner y.ouj and a three-button, waistcoat would

be easily remembered. It is only when the number rises into the regions of live five's and sixes — where the savage aforesaid gives up arithmetic and takes refuge in the word " many "' — that exact recollection becomes difficult.

From this point of view the ordinary Londoner's ignorance of London is quite an achievement. An excellent amusement for evening parties is to ask how many arches there are in Waterloo Bridge. Statistics show that out of a roomful of 12 persons four will say it has three arches, five will say four, one will say five, and two will candidly admit that they" have not the least idea — all these being persons who have crossed the bridge and wplkccl the Embankment times without number. The proper answer is nine ; but you will probably not believe it till you go and count them for yourself.