The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly
not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will
assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every
roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency
to overbalance with a well-adjusted stone.
On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we
began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in
the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a
moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom I had so
contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from
wall to wall with gossips looking on and listening. The pad
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