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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: drunkenness. On one side, there was a bit of a bar, with some
half-a-dozen bottles. Two labourers sat waiting supper, in
attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking lass bustled about
with a sleepy child of two; and the landlady began to derange the
pots upon the stove, and set some beefsteak to grill.
'These gentlemen are pedlars?' she asked sharply. And that was all
the conversation forthcoming. We began to think we might be
pedlars after all. I never knew a population with so narrow a
range of conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur-Sambre. But
manners and bearing have not a wider currency than bank-notes. You
have only to get far enough out of your beat, and all your
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