of force,
builds wheels and mills; his head is full of cogs and levers and
eccentrics; and after he has gone out to his engineering in the great
machine-shop of a modern world, the old corn-chamber at home is lumbered
with his mysterious contrivances, studies for a self-impelling or
gravitating machine and perpetual motion. Another boy is fired with the
mystery of form. He will draw the cat and dog; his chalk and charcoal
are on all our elbows; he carves a ram's head on his bat, an eagle on a
walking-stick, perches a cock on top of the barn, puts an eye and a nose
to every triangle of the geometer, and paints faces on the wheels of his
mechanical brother. In all these boys there is something more than
ability; there is propensity, an attraction irresistible. Their minds
run, we say, in that direction, and they creep or lie still, if turned
in another. The young shepherd will toss eggs, spin platters, and
balance knives, year after year, in solitude, with a patient energy and
endurance able to command any fortune.

What philter is in these faculties? The boy who will be great is always
discontented with his work, ready to rub out and begin again. He follows
a bee, and never quite touches that which drew him on. Plainly, the mere
ability to do is a dry straw, but through it our seeker tastes an
intoxicating, seductive liquor, from which he cannot take away his lips.

It is the liquor of our life. In measure, or form, or tone, he applies
himself to the very breasts of Nature, and draws through these exteriors
a motherly milk which was her blood and hastens to be his own. If the
young cub holds fast to the teat, be sure the stream flows and his veins
swell. Matter is the dry rind of this succulent, nutritious universe:
prick it on any side, and you draw the same juice. Varieties of
endowment are only so many pitchers dipped in one stream. Poet, painter,
musician, mathematician, the gift is an accident of organization, the
result is admission to that by which all things are, and by partaking
which we become what we must be.

Of this experience there can be no adequate report. It is as though one
should attempt to go up in a balloon above the atmosphere and bring down
the ether in his hands. There is a spring on every door in Nature to
close it behind the returning footsteps of her lover, so that he can
lead no man freely into the chamber where she gave him love; it is only
by the confidence, fervency, and reverence of the