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undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow, and why?
There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with
no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more
impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety
arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable,
craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly.
The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of
the conflict within us,--of the definite with the indefinite--of the
substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus
far, it is the shadow which prevails,--we struggle in vain. The clock
strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is
the chanticleer--note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It
flies--it disappears--we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor
now. Alas, it is too late!
We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss--we
grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger.
Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and
horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations,
still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor
from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights.
But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into
palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon
of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one
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