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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: office and look at the other clerks. One of them was fifty-five, and he
still received six hundred dollars--his wages for the last thirty years. I
was then twenty-one; and though I never despaired to the extent of
believing that years would fail to increase my value to the firm by a
single cent, still, for what could I hope? If my salary were there and
then to be doubled, what kind of support was twelve hundred dollars to
offer Ethel, with her dresses, and her dinners, and her father's
carriage? For two years I was wretchedly unhappy beneath the many hours
of gaiety that came to me, as to every young man."
"Those two years we could have been in Michigan," said Ethel, "had you
understood."
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