The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: sense of what he said, when he could be induced to say anything; and
particularly valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a right-hand man
in the parish, and a model to parents. The transfiguration had been for
the moment only; some Barbarossa, some old Adam of our ancestors, sleeps
in all of us till the fit circumstance shall call it into action; and,
for as sober as he now seemed, Hob had given once for all the measure of
the devil that haunted him. He was married, and, by reason of the
effulgence of that legendary night, was adored by his wife.
He had a mob of little lusty, barefoot children who marched in a caravan
the long miles to school, the stages of whose pilgrimage were marked by
acts of spoliation and mischief, and who were qualified in the country-
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