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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: relationship. In Tahiti things are not so strictly ordered; when
Ori and I 'made brothers,' both our families sat with us at table,
yet only he and I, who had eaten with intention were supposed to be
affected by the ceremony. For the adoption of an infant I believe
no formality to be required; the child is handed over by the
natural parents, and grows up to inherit the estates of the
adoptive. Presents are doubtless exchanged, as at all junctures of
island life, social or international; but I never heard of any
banquet - the child's presence at the daily board perhaps
sufficing. We may find the rationale in the ancient Arabian idea
that a common diet makes a common blood, with its derivative axiom
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