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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: some unsightly neighbourhood, and especially if we have come to be
more or less dependent on what we see, we must set ourselves to hunt
out beautiful things with all the ardour and patience of a botanist
after a rye plant. Day by day we perfect ourselves in the art of
seeing nature more favourably. We learn to live with her, as people
learn to live with fretful or violent spouses: to dwell lovingly on
what is good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak or
inharmonious. We learn, also, to come to each place in the right
spirit. The traveller, as Brantome quaintly tells us, 'FAIT DES
DISCOURS EN SOI POUR SOUTENIR EN CHEMIN'; and into these discourses
he weaves something out of all that he sees and suffers by the way;
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