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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that
one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer.
Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar."
He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody's
hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head
off to see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and
by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness
of the work spoiled his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time
he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals,
was some forty-two years. In fact, he died in harness. During all
those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through
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