When the baby was very little indeed, and first began to open his eyes, his mother saw that the bright light of the windows dazzled them, and gave him pain; so she shut the blinds and put down the curtains.

When the baby was so very little, he did not know how to look about at the things which were around him. He had not learned to move his eyes steadily from one thing to another. He could not take hold of any thing, either, with his hands. He did not know that his hands were made to take hold of things with. His mother held a handsome ivory ring before him, and endeavored to make him see it and take it. She put it in his hand, but he did not know how to hold it, and it dropped upon the floor.

The baby was very weak too. He could not walk nor sit up, nor even hold up his head. Unless his mother held his head for him, it would drop down and hang upon his shoulder. Once she laid him down upon the bed, and she went away a minute or two. While she was gone he rolled over on his face, and was so weak that he could not get back again. I do not think he knew how to try. His mother came back and lifted him up, or perhaps he would have been stifled.

One day his mother said, “Oh, how many things I have got to teach my little child. I must teach him to look, and to hold up his head, and to take things in his hands, and I must do all these things while he is quite a little baby.”

She thought she would first teach him to look. So she let in a little light, and when he was quiet and still, she held him so that he could see it. But he did not seem to notice it, and pretty soon he went to sleep.

The next day she tried it again; and again on the following day; and soon she found that he would look very steadily at the white curtain, or at the place where the sun shone upon the wall. She did not yet try to make him look at little things, for she knew she could not hope to make him see little things till he had learned to notice something large and bright.

When Samuel was lying in his mother’s lap, looking steadily at something; she was always careful not to move him, or to make any noise, or to do any thing which would distract his attention. She knew that children were always puzzled with having two things to think of at a time, and she was afraid that if while he was thinking of the light and trying to look at it, he should hear voices around him, he would stop thinking of the light, and begin to wonder what that noise could be.

In about a week, Samuel had learned his lesson very well. He could look pretty steadily at a large bright spot when it was still. Then his mother thought she would try to teach him to look at something smaller. She therefore asked his father to buy her a large bright orange, and one day when he was lying quietly in her lap, she held it up before him. But he would not notice it; he seemed to be looking at the window beyond.

Then his mother turned her chair gently round, and sat with her back towards the window so that he could not see the window, and then he looked at the orange. Presently she moved the orange slowly,—very slowly,—backwards and forwards, to teach him to follow it with his eyes. Thus the baby took his first lessons in looking.