The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: they weren't superficially repulsive, they were a hundred times
cleverer than most of the dreary grandees, the "poor swells" they
rushed about Europe to catch up with. "After all they ARE amusing
- they are!" he used to pronounce with the wisdom of the ages. To
which Pemberton always replied: "Amusing - the great Moreen
troupe? Why they're altogether delightful; and if it weren't for
the hitch that you and I (feeble performers!) make in the ensemble
they'd carry everything before them."
What the boy couldn't get over was the fact that this particular
blight seemed, in a tradition of self-respect, so undeserved and so
arbitrary. No doubt people had a right to take the line they
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