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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: with self-conceit."
All this talk of degeneration always affects me as though I had
accidentally overheard offensive talk about my own daughter. It
offends me that these charges are wholesale, and rest on such
worn-out commonplaces, on such wordy vapourings as degeneration
and absence of ideals, or on references to the splendours of the
past. Every accusation, even if it is uttered in ladies' society,
ought to be formulated with all possible definiteness, or it is
not an accusation, but idle disparagement, unworthy of decent
people.
I am an old man, I have been lecturing for thirty years, but I
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