in the old-fashioned notion that people all come into
the world with minds and tastes so unlike, that, if you educate one
ever so carefully, he never will make a poet, or a painter, or a
musician, as the case may be; while the other will be a master in one
of these branches, with scarcely any instruction. But I do believe
there is a great difference in natural capacities for a particular
art; and that some persons learn that art easily, while others learn
it with difficulty, and could, perhaps, never excel in it, if they
should drive at it for a life-time.

Ralph Waldo, a boy who lived near our house, when I was a child, was
the sport of all the neighborhood, on account of the high estimate in
which he held his talent at drawing pictures. Now it so happened that
Ralph's pictures, to say the least, were rather poor specimens of the
art. Some of them, according to the best of my recollection, would
never have suggested the particular animal or thing for which they
were made, if they had not been labeled, or if Ralph had not called
them by name.

Such dogs and cats, such horses and cows, such houses and trees, such
men and women, were never seen since the world began, as those which
figured on his slate. And yet he thought a great deal of his
pictures. How happy it used to make him, when some of the boys in the
neighborhood, perhaps purely out of sport, would say, "Come, Ralph,
let's see you make a horse now." With what zeal he used to set himself
about the task of making a horse. When it was done, and ready for
exhibition, though it was a perfect scare-crow of a thing, he used to
hold it up, with ever so much pride expressed in the rough features of
his face, as if it were an effort worthy of being hung up in the
Academy of Design, or the Gallery of Fine Arts.

This state of things lasted for some years. But Ralph did not make
much progress in the art. His horses continued to be the same stiff,
awkward things that they were at first. So did his cows, and oxen, and
dogs, and cats, and men. It became pretty evident, at least to
everybody except the young artist himself, that he never would shine
in his favorite profession. He was not "cut out for it," apparently,
though it took a great while to beat the idea out of his head, that he
was going to make one of the greatest painters in the country. When he
became a young man, however, he had sense enough to choose the
carpenter's trade, instead of the painter's art. I think