re anxious as to what he was to do with his
money. He tried to put away the thought; but the terrible _magistra
necessitas_ went round and round him with ever-diminishing circles,
clearly indicating a conflict in which he must succumb. He must make a
will; an act which it is said no man is ever in a hearty condition to
perform, unless mayhap he is angry, and wishes to cut off an ungrateful
dog with a shilling; and besides the general disinclination to sign the
disposal of so much wealth, of which he was more than ordinarily fond,
and to give away, as it were, _omnia praeter animam_, in the very view
of giving away the soul too, he was in a great perplexity as to how to
divide his means. Nor could he reconcile himself to a division at all,
preferring, as the greatly lesser evil, the alternative of destinating
his fortune all of a lump, with some hope of its being kept together. As
for Walter, though he had some affection for him, he had not much
confidence in him, for he had seen that he was hare-brained as regarded
things which suited his fancy, and pig-brained as respected those which
solicited and required sound judgment; while Rachel, again, was
everything which, among the lower angels, could be comprehended under
the delightful title of "dear soul," an amiable and devoted creature, as
stedfast in her affections as she was wise in the selection of their
objects. So by revolving in his mind all the beauties of the character
of her who, however disqualified by law, was still of his flesh and
blood, yea, of his very nature, as he complacently thought in compliment
to himself, he became more and more reconciled to his intention, if the
very thought of making a will, which had been horrible to him, did not
become even a pleasing kind of meditation. So is it--when Nature imposes
an inevitable duty, she gives man the power of inventing a pleasing
reason for his obedience; nay, so much of a self-dissembler is he, that
he even cheats himself into the belief that his obedience is an act of
his own will. In all which he at least proved the value of one of the
arguments in favour of marriage; for trite it is to say, a bachelor
bears to no one a love which reconciles him to will-making, while a
father, in leaving his means to his children, feels as if he were giving
to himself. But this plan of our merchant-burgess had in addition a
spice of ingenuity in it which still more pleased him--he would so
contrive matters that the daughte