THERE are some persons of a dull and languid turn. They do nothing with that healthy alacrity, that gleesome energy which bespeaks a sound mind even more than a vigorous body; but they drag themselves to the inevitable task with remonstrating reluctance, as if every joint were set in a socket of torture, or as if they expected the quick flesh to cleave to the next implement of industry they handled. Having no wholesome love of work, no joyous delight in duty, they do everything grudgingly, in the most superficial manner, and at the latest moment.
Others there are, who, if you find them at their post, you will find them dozing at it. They are a sort of perpetual somnambulists, walking through their sleep; moving in a constant mystery; looking for their faculties, and forgetting what they are looking for; not able to find their work, and when they have found their work not able to find their hands; doing everything dreamily, and therefore everything confusedly and incompletely; their work a dream, their sleep a dream, not repose, not refreshment, but a slumberous vision of rest, a dreamy query concerning sleep; too late for everything, taking their passage when the ship has sailed, insuring their property when the house is burned, locking the door when the goods are stolen—men whose bodies seem to have started in the race of existence before their minds were ready, and who are always gazing out vacantly as if they expected their wits were coming up by the next arrival.
But, besides the sloths and the somnambulists, there is a third class—the day dreamers. These are a very mournful, because a self-deceiving generation. Like a man who had his windows glazed with yellow glass, and who can fancy a golden sunshine or a mellow autumn on the fields, even when a wintry sleet is sweeping over them, the day-dreamer lives in an elysium of his own creating. With a foot on either side of the fire—with his chin on his bosom, and the wrong end of the book turned towards him, he can pursue his self-complacent musings till he imagines himself a traveler in unknown lands—the explorer of Central Africa—the solver of all the unsolved problems in science—the author of some unprecedented poem at which the wide world is wondering—or something so stupendous that he even begins to quail at his own glory. The misery is, that whilst nothing is done towards attaining the greatness, his luxurious imagination takes its possession for granted, and with his feet on the fender he fancies himself already on the highest pinnacle of fame; and a still greater misery is, that the time thus wasted in unprofitable musings, if spent in honest application and downright working, would go very far to carry him where his sublime imagination fain would be.
Extracted.