THE ANNUITY. [George Outram, born at Glasgow, 25th March, 1805; died there, 1856. He was called to the bar in 1827; became part proprietor and editor of the Glasgow Herald, and wrote a number of humorous and satirical verses. A collection of his poems is published by Blackwood.] I gaed to spend a week in Fife An unco week it proved to beFor there I met a waesome wife Lamentin' her viduity. Her grief brak out sae fierce and fell, I sell't her an annuity. The bargain lookit fair eneugh She just was turn'd saxty-three I couldna guess'd she'd prove sae teugh But years have come, and years have gane, Since she got her annuity. She's crined awa' to bane and skin; But that it seems is naught to me. She's like to live-although she's in The last stage of tenuity. She munches wi' her wizen'd gums, An' stumps about on legs o' thrums, But comes as sure as Christmas comesTo ca' for her annuity. I read the tables drawn wi' care Her chance o' life was stated there Wi' perfect perspicuity. But tables here, or tables there, She's lived ten years beyond her share, Last Yule she had a fearfu' hoast- But deil may care! the blast gaed by, If there's a sough of cholera, Or typhus-wha sae gleg as she! She buys up baths, and drugs an a', In siccan superfluity! She doesna need-she's fever-proof: The pest walk'd o'er her very roofShe tauld me sae-and then her loof Held out for her annuity. Ae day she fell-her arm she brak-- It's cured!--she handles't like a flail - Wi' her and her annuity. Her broozled flesh and broken banes Are weel as flesh and banes can be; She beats the taeds that live in stanes And fatten in vacuity. They die when they're exposed to airThey canna thole the atmosphere; But her!-expose her onywhere, She lives for her annuity. If mortal means could nick her thread Sma' crime it wad appear to me: Ca't murder, or ca't homicide, I'd justify't-and do it tae. But how to fell a wither'd wife That's carved out o' the tree o' life! The timmer limmer daurs the knife To settle her annuity. I'd try a shot; but whar's the mark? She might be drown'd: but go she'll not Or hang'd-if cord could grip a throat It's fitter far to hang the rope It draws out like a telescope: To settle her annuity. Will puzion do't?-It has been tried. It's needless to assail her doubts; The Bible says the age o' man Threescore and ten perchance may be. She's ninety-four.-Let them wha can Explain the incongruity. She should hae lived afore the flood; She's been embalm'd inside and out; She's sauted to the last degree; Sae caper-like and cruety. Than her accurs'd annuity. The water-drap wears out the rock, It's pay me here, and pay me there, I'm charged for her annuity. ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. assert that he did, the puny force of some cause, about as powerful, you would have supposed, as a spider, may make a seizure of the hapless boaster the very next moment, and contemptuously exhibit the futility of the determinations by which he was to have proved the independence of his understanding and his will. He belongs to whatever can make capture of him; and one thing after another vindicates its right to him, by arresting him while he is trying to go on; as twigs and chips floating near the edge of a river are intercepted by every weed, and whirled in every little eddy. Having concluded on a design, he may pledge himself to accomplish it--if the hundred diversities of feeling which may come within the week will let him. His character precluding all foresight of his conduct, he may sit and wonder what form and direction his views and actions are destined to take to-morrow; as a farmer has often to acknowledge that next day's proceed [Rev. John Foster, born in Yorkshire, 1770; died ings are at the disposal of its winds and clouds. at Stapleton, 15th October, 1843. He officiated for some time as a Baptist minister, but his latter years were chiefly occupied in literary pursuits. His reputation rests mainly upon his essays: On a Man's writing Memoirs of Himself: On Decisim of Character: The Application of the Epithet Romantic; Beangelical Religion:-these were written in the form of a series of letters to a friend: Erils of Popular Ignorance; Lectures, &c. "Mr. Foster's essays are full of ingenuity and original remarks; the style of them is at once terse and elegant."-Dr. Dibdin.] A person of undecisive character wonders how all the embarrassments in the world happened to meet exactly in his way, to place him just in that one situation for which he is peculiarly unadapted, but in which he is also willing to think no other man could have acted with facility or confidence. Incapable of setting up a firm purpose on the basis of things as they are, he is often employed in vain speculations on some different supposable state of things, which would have saved him from all this perplexity and irresolution. He thinks what a determined course he could have pursued if his talents, his health, his age, had been different; if he had been acquainted with some one person sooner; if his friends were, in this or the other point, different from what they are; or if fortune had showered her favours on him. And he gives himself as much license to complain as if all these advantages had been among the rights of his nativity, but refused, by a malignant or capricious fate, to his life. Thus he is occupied, instead of marking with a vigilant eye, and seizing with a strong hand, all the possibilities of his actual situation. A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself; since, if he dared to This man's notions and determinations always depend very much on other human be ings; and what chance for consistency and stability while the persons with whom he may converse or transact are so various? This very evening he may talk with a man whose sentiments will melt away the present form and outline of his purposes, however firm and de fined he may have fancied them to be. A succession of persons whose faculties were stronger than his own might, in spite of his irresolute reaction, take him and dispose of him as they pleased. Such infirmity of spirit practically confesses him made for subjection, and he passes, like a slave, from owner to owner. Sometimes indeed it happens that a person so constituted falls into the train, and under the permanent ascendency, of some one stronger mind, which thus becomes through life the oracle and guide, and gives the inferior a steady will and plan. This, when the governing spirit is wise and virtuous, is a fortunate relief to the feeling, and an advantage gained to the utility of the subordinate and, as it were, appended mind. The regulation of every man's plan must greatly depend on the course of events, which come in an order not to be foreseen or prevented. But in accommodating the plans of conduct to the train of events, the difference between two men may be no less than that, in the one instance the man is subservient to the events, and in the other the events are made subservient to the man. Some men seem to have been taken along by a succession of events, and, as it were, handed forward ia helpless passiveness from one to another, hav- | before he decided to pass the Rubicon, but it ing no determined principle in their own characters by which they could constrain those events to serve a design formed antecedently to them, or apparently in defiance of them. The events seized them as a neutral material, not they the events. Others, advancing through life with an internal invincible determination, have seemed to make the train of circumstances, whatever they were, conduce as much to their chief design as if they had, by some directing interposition, been brought about on purpose. It is wonderful how even the casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to subserve a design which they may, in their first apparent tendency, threaten to frustrate. is probable he suffered but few to elapse between the decision and the execution. And any one of his friends who should have been apprised of his determination, and understood his character, would have smiled contemptuously to hear it insinuated that though Cæsar had resolved, Cæsar would not dare; or that though he might cross the Rubicon, whose opposite banks presented to him no hostile legions, he might come to other rivers which he would not cross; or that either rivers, or any other obstacle, would deter him from prosecuting his determination from this ominous commencement to its very last consequence. But You may have known such examples, though they are comparatively not numerous. You may have seen a man of this vigorous character in a state of indecision concerning some affair in which it was necessary for him to determine, because it was necessary for him to act. in this case his manner would assure you that he would not remain long undecided; you would wonder if you found him still balancing and hesitating the next day. If he explained his thoughts you would perceive that their clear process, evidently at each effort gaining something toward the result, must certainly reach it ere long. The deliberation of such a mind is a very different thing from the fluctuation of one whose second thinking only upsets the first, and whose third confounds both. To know how to obtain a determination is one of the first requisites and indications of a rationally decisive character. When the decision was arrived at, and a plan of action approved, you would feel an assurance that something would absolutely be done. It is characteristic of such a mind to think for effect, and the pleasure of escaping from temporary doubt gives an additional impulse to the force with which it is carried into action. The man will not re-examine his conclusions with endless repetition, and he will not be delayed long by consulting other persons after he had ceased to consult himself. He cannot bear to sit still among unexecuted decisions and unattempted projects. We wait to hear of his achievements, and are confident we shall not wait long. The possibility or the means may not be obvious to us, but we know that everything will be attempted, and that a spirit of such determined will is like a river, which, in whatever manner it is obstructed, will make its way somewhere. It must have Cost Cæsar many anxious hours of deliberation | One signal advantage possessed by a mind of this character is that its passions are not wasted. The whole measure of passion of which any one, with important transactions before him, is capable, is not more than enough to supply interest and energy for the required practical exertions; therefore as little as possible of this costly flame should be expended in a way that does not augment the force of action. But nothing can less contribute, or be more destructive to vigour of action, than protracted anxious fluctuation, through resolutions adopted, rejected, resumed, suspended; while yet nothing causes a greater expense of feeling. The heart is fretted and exhausted by being subjected to an alternation of contrary excitements, with the ultimate mortifying consciousness of their contributing to no end. The long-wavering deliberation, whether to perform some bold action of difficult virtue, has often cost more to feeling than the action itself, or a series of such actions, would have cost; with the great disadvantage too of not being relieved by any of that invigoration which the man in action finds in the activity itself, that spirit created to renovate the energy which the action is expending. When the passions are not consumed among dubious musings and abortive resolutions, their utmost value and use can be secured by throwing all their animating force into effective operation. Another advantage of this character is that it exempts from a great deal of interference and obstructive annoyance which an irresolute man may be almost sure to encounter. Weakness in every form tempts arrogance, and a man may be allowed to wish for a kind of character with which stupidity and impertinence may not make so free. When a firm decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man, and leaves him room and freedom. The disposition to interrogate, dictate, or banter preserves a respect tion they spent about twenty-four hours; when at length all acceded to his verdict of acquittal. ful and politic distance, judging it not unwise | the expense of the prisoner's life. In this situato keep the peace with a person of so much energy. A conviction that he understands, and that he wills with extraordinary force, silences the conceit that intended to perplex or instruct him, and intimidates the malice that was disposed to attack him. There is a feeling, as in respect to fate, that the decrees of so inflexible a spirit must be right, or that at least they will be accomplished. But not only will he secure the freedom of acting for himself: he will obtain also by degrees the coincidence of those in whose company he is to transact the business of life. If the manners of such a man be free from arrogance, and he can qualify his firmness with a moderate degree of insinuation; and if his measures have partly lost the appearance of being the dictates of his will, under the wider and softer sanction of some experience that they are reasonable, both competition and fear will be laid to sleep, and his will may acquire an unresisted ascendency over many who will be pleased to fall into the mechanism of a system which they find makes them more successful and happy than they could have been amidst the anxiety of adjusting plans and expedients of their own, and the consequences of often adjusting them ill. I have known several parents, both fathers and mothers, whose management of their families has answered this description, and has displayed a striking example of the facile complacency with which a number of persons, of different ages and dispositions, will yield to the decisions of a firm mind, acting on an equitable and enlightened system. The last resource of this character is hard inflexible pertinacity, on which it may be allowed to rest its strength after finding it can be effectual in none of its milder forms. I remember admiring an instance of this kind in a firm, sagacious, and estimable old man whom I well knew, and who has long been dead. Being on a jury in a trial of life and death, he was satisfied of the innocence of the prisoner; the other eleven were of the opposite opinion. But he was resolved the man should not be condemned; and as the first effort for preventing it, very properly made application to the minds of his associates, spending several hours in labouring to convince them. But he found he made no impression, while he was exhausting the strength which it was necessary to reserve for another mode of operation. He then calmly told them that it should now be a trial who could endure confinement and famine the longest, and that they might be quite assured he would sooner die than release them at It is not necessary to amplify on the indis pensable importance of this quality in order to the accomplishment of anything eminently good. We instantly see that every path to signal excellence is so obstructed and beset that none but a spirit so qualified can pass. songs. "IN MAIDEN MEDITATION." What is her thought? may we not guess What is her thought? sits she alone, The treasured thought of her memory! Upon her knees, at dawn of day, What is her thought? of former days? No, in that calm and lovely face What is her thought? of the time to come? |