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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: this duplicity? I deny it. The truth consists in the genuineness
of the feeling, in the genuine recognition of the two men, so
similar and so different, as your two partners in the hazard of
life. Obviously, a humbug, thinking only of winning his little
race, would stand a chance of profiting by his artifices. Men,
professors or coal-heavers, are easily deceived; they even have an
extraordinary knack of lending themselves to deception, a sort of
curious and inexplicable propensity to allow themselves to be led
by the nose with their eyes open. But a ship is a creature which
we have brought into the world, as it were on purpose to keep us up
to the mark. In her handling a ship will not put up with a mere
The Mirror of the Sea |
