Those of the second class are always better in theory than in practice;
for with them zeal ever runs before knowledge. They will delight in
telling how a thing should be done, but will find it very difficult
to do it themselves. A blacksmith of this class will tell with great
exactness how a horse should be shod, but if trusted to perform that
office, ten to one the poor animal will go limping from his hands. So a
carpenter of the same class will be full of plans and fancies that he
will wish to carry out for the benefit of his employers; but his work,
when completed, though perhaps elegant and ornamental, will probably be
inappropriate in appearance, and not adapted to the use for which it
was intended. From this class come inventors of machines that are never
heard of after they get into the patent-office, schemers and speculators
whose plans end in ruin, boon companions, brilliant talkers, sparkling
orators, elegant and ornate poets who sing blithely for their own day
and generation, preachers and statesmen who are ever led away by Utopian
and millennial dreams; in short, men who may shine while they live, but
are seldom remembered when they die.
The third class are men of mark in whatever walk of life they are found;
--men to be relied upon for whatever they may undertake. They are men
who can produce in Life what their Understandings know and imagine;
or, rather, who know how to select from their stores of Thought and
Imagination whatever may be realized in Life.
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