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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: at least, are moving; they bring with them the sentiment of the open
road; yesterday, perhaps, they were in Tyrol, and next week they will
be far in Lombardy, while all we sick folk still simmer in our
mountain prison. Some of them, too, are welcome as the flowers in
May for their own sake; some of them may have a human voice; some may
have that magic which transforms a wooden box into a song-bird, and
what we jeeringly call a fiddle into what we mention with respect as
a violin. From that grinding lilt, with which the blind man, seeking
pence, accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there
is surely a difference rather of kind than of degree to that
unearthly voice of singing that bewails and praises the destiny of
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