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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: to modify the social atmosphere in which Knox and his women
friends met, and loved and trusted each other. To the man
who had been their priest and was now their minister, women
would be able to speak with a confidence quite impossible in
these latter days; the women would be able to speak, and the
man to hear. It was a beaten road just then; and I daresay
we should be no less scandalised at their plain speech than
they, if they could come back to earth, would be offended at
our waltzes and worldly fashions. This, then, was the
footing on which Knox stood with his many women friends. The
reader will see, as he goes on, how much of warmth, of
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