he will be likely to distinguish himself.

I don't believe 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