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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: In fact, it may as well be said at once that the poor man was a
drunkard, which explains how he, with all his high education and great
ability, came to hold the humble post of tutor on a remote Boer farm.
Years before, when under the influence of drink, he had committed some
crime in France--I don't know what it was, and never inquired--and fled
to the Cape to avoid prosecution. Here he obtained a professorship at
one of the colleges, but after a while appeared in the lecture-room
quite drunk and lost his employment. The same thing happened in other
towns, till at last he drifted to distant Maraisfontein, where his
employer tolerated his weakness for the sake of the intellectual
companionship for which something in his own nature seemed to crave.
Marie |
