his making a will,
though the brother and sister, estimating their rights as the law
established them, said but little on the subject, and that little was
rather against the propriety of annoying a man, in their brother's
condition, with business of so perplexing a nature. The fact that these
important personages set their faces against the scheme had due weight,
and most of the relatives began to calculate the probable amount of their
respective shares under the law of distribution, as it stood in that day.
This excellent and surpassingly wise community of New York had not then
reached the pass of exceeding liberality towards which it is now so
rapidly tending. In that day, the debtor was not yet thought of, as the
creditor's next heir, and that plausible and impracticable desire of a
false philanthropy, which is termed the Homestead Exemption Law
--impracticable as to anything like a just and equitable exemption of
equal amount in all cases of indebtedness--was not yet dreamed of. New
York was then a sound and healthful community; making its mistakes,
doubtless, as men ever will err; but the control of things had not yet
passed into the hands of sheer political empirics, whose ignorance and
quackery were stimulated by the lowest passion for majorities. Among other
things that were then respected, were wills; but it was not known to a
single individual, among all those who thronged the dwelling of Deacon
Pratt, that the dying man had ever mustered the self-command necessary to
make such an instrument. He was free to act, but did not choose to avail
himself of his freedom. Had he survived a few years, he would have found
himself in the enjoyment of a liberty so sublimated, that he could not
lease, or rent a farm, or collect a common debt, without coming under the
harrow of the tiller of the political soil.

The season had advanced to the early part of April, and that is usually a
soft and balmy month on the sea-shore, though liable to considerable and
sudden changes of temperature. On the day to which we now desire to
transfer the scene, the windows of the deacon's bed-room were open, and
the soft south wind fanned his hollow and pallid cheek. Death was near,
though the principle of life struggled hard with the King of Terrors. It
was now that that bewildered and Pharasaical faith which had so long held
this professor of religion in a bondage even more oppressive than open and
announced sins, most felt the insufficiency