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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: cochineal. And with that murderous parody, logical optimism
and the praises of the best of possible words went
irrevocably out of season, and have been no more heard of in
the mouths of reasonable men. Whitman spares us all
allusions to the cochineal; he treats evil and sorrow in a
spirit almost as of welcome; as an old sea-dog might have
welcomed the sight of the enemy's topsails off the Spanish
Main. There, at least, he seems to say, is something obvious
to be done. I do not know many better things in literature
than the brief pictures, - brief and vivid like things seen
by lightning, - with which he tries to stir up the world's
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