Yet, for one’s general comfort and particular happiness, there does not appear to be any faculty more desirable than the power of “making up the mind.” Right or wrong, it saves a deal of wear and tear; and it prevents an infinite variety of trouble. Commend us to the individual who closes upon propositions like a nutcracker—whose promptness of will has a sledge-hammer way with it, and hits nails continually on the head. Genius may be brilliant—talent commanding; but what is genius, or what is talent, if it lack that which we may call the clinching faculty—if it hesitates, veers, and flutters—suffers opportunity to pass, and stumbles at occasion? To reason well is much, no doubt; but reason loses the race, if it sits in meditation on the fence when competition rushes by. Under the best of circumstances, something must be left to hazard. There is a chance in all things. No man can so calculate odds in the affairs of life as to insure a certainty. The screws and linchpins necessary to our purpose have not the inflexibility of a fate; yet they must be trusted at some degree of risk. Our candle may be put out by a puff of wind on the stairs, let it be sheltered ever so carefully. Betsy is a good cook, yet beefsteaks have been productive of strangulation. Does it then follow from this, that we are never to go to bed, except in the dark, and to abstain from breaking our fast until dinner is announced? One may pause and reflect too much. There must be action, conclusion, result, or we are a failure, to all intents and purposes—a self-confessed failure—defunct from the beginning. And such was the case with Peleg W. Ponder, who never arrived at a conclusion, or contrived to reach a result. Peleg is always “stumped”—he “don’t know what to think”—he “can’t tell what to say”—an unfinished gentleman, with a mind like a dusty garret, full, as it were, of ricketty furniture, yet nothing serviceable—broken-backed chairs—three-legged tables—pitchers without a handle—cracked decanters and fractured looking-glasses—that museum of mutilations, in which housewifery rejoices, under the vague, but never-realized hope, that these things may eventually “come in play.” Peleg’s opinions lie about the workshop of his brain, in every stage of progress but the last—chips, sticks, and saw-dust, enough but no article ready to send home. Should you meet Peleg in the street, with “Good morning, Peleg—how do you find yourself to-day?” “Well—I don’t know exactly—I’m pretty—no, not very—pray, how do you do, yourself?”