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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: chance were hidden - I would wonder in what play he figured, and
what immortal legend justified his attitude and strange apparel!
And then to go within, to announce yourself as an intending
purchaser, and, closely watched, be suffered to undo those bundles
and breathlessly devour those pages of gesticulating villains,
epileptic combats, bosky forests, palaces and war-ships, frowning
fortresses and prison vaults - it was a giddy joy. That shop,
which was dark and smelt of Bibles, was a loadstone rock for all
that bore the name of boy. They could not pass it by, nor, having
entered, leave it. It was a place besieged; the shopmen, like the
Jews rebuilding Salem, had a double task. They kept us at the
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