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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: trickled down his weather-beaten face like drops of rain on an old
rugged wall. I learned afterwards that he was looked upon as the
terror of sailors, a hard man; that he had never had wife or chick
of his own, and that, engaged from his tenderest years in deep-sea
voyages, he knew women and children merely by sight.
Perhaps he was dropping those tears over his lost opportunities,
from sheer envy of paternity and in strange jealousy of a sorrow
which he could never know. Man, and even the sea-man, is a
capricious animal, the creature and the victim of lost
opportunities. But he made me feel ashamed of my callousness. I
had no tears.
'Twixt Land & Sea |
