The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: IV.
It was as a student that I first knew Fleeming, as one of that
modest number of young men who sat under his ministrations in a
soul-chilling class-room at the top of the University buildings.
His presence was against him as a professor: no one, least of all
students, would have been moved to respect him at first sight:
rather short in stature, markedly plain, boyishly young in manner,
cocking his head like a terrier with every mark of the most
engaging vivacity and readiness to be pleased, full of words, full
of paradox, a stranger could scarcely fail to look at him twice, a
man thrown with him in a train could scarcely fail to be engaged by
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