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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: HUMAINE. He had then his eye on Parliament; and soon after the
time of which I write, he made a showy speech at a political
dinner, was cried up to heaven next day in the COURANT, and the day
after was dashed lower than earth with a charge of plagiarism in
the SCOTSMAN. Report would have it (I daresay, very wrongly) that
he was betrayed by one in whom he particularly trusted, and that
the author of the charge had learned its truth from his own lips.
Thus, at least, he was up one day on a pinnacle, admired and envied
by all; and the next, though still but a boy, he was publicly
disgraced. The blow would have broken a less finely tempered
spirit; and even him I suppose it rendered reckless; for he took
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