We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate action and energy. We glow--we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, and our whole souls are on fire with anticipation of the glorious result. It must--it shall be undertaken to-day--and yet we put it off until to-morrow. And why? There is no answer except that we feel perverse--employing 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. The craving gathers 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, but at the same time is the chanticleer-note to the Thing 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!