Alexandria Gazette

IRRESOLUTION.

Irresolution is a fatal habit: it is not vicious in itself, but it leads to vice, creeping upon its victims with a fatal facility, the penalty of which many a fine heart has paid at the scaffold. The idler, the spendthrift, the epicurean and the drunkard are among its victims. Perhaps in the latter its effects appear in the most hideous form. He knows that the goblet he is about to drain is poison, yet he swallows it. He knows—for the example of thousands has painted it in glaring colors—that it will deaden all his faculties, take the strength from his limbs and the happiness from his heart, oppress him with disease and hurry his progress to a dishonored grave, yet he drains it. How beautiful, on the contrary, is the power of resolution, enabling the one who possesses it to pass through perils and dangers, trials and temptations! "Avoid the contraction or the habit of irresolution. Strive against it to the end."