|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Total abstinence, like all ascetical conclusions, is unfriendly to
the most generous, cheerful, and human parts of man; but it could
have adduced many instances and arguments from among our ship's
company. I was, one day conversing with a kind and happy Scotsman,
running to fat and perspiration in the physical, but with a taste for
poetry and a genial sense of fun. I had asked him his hopes in
emigrating. They were like those of so many others, vague and
unfounded; times were bad at home; they were said to have a turn for
the better in the States; a man could get on anywhere, he thought.
That was precisely the weak point of his position; for if he could
get on in America, why could he not do the same in Scotland? But I
|
