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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: enough. The soldiers, of course, had kept treeless Drybone supplied with
wood. But in these latter days wood was very scarce. None grew nearer
than twenty or thirty miles--none, that is, to make boards of a
sufficient width for epitaphs. And twenty miles was naturally far to go
to hew a board for a man of whom you knew perhaps nothing but what he
said his name was, and to whom you owed nothing, perhaps, but a trifling
poker debt. Hence it came to pass that headboards grew into a sort of
directory. They were light to lift from one place to another. A single
coat of white paint would wipe out the first tenant's name sufficiently
to paint over it the next comer's. By this thrifty habit the original
boards belonging to the soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the
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