The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: play dignity - or else going down to Apia on some more or less
unsatisfactory errand. Altogether it is a life that suits me, but
it absorbs me like an ocean. That is what I have always envied and
admired in Scott; with all that immensity of work and study, his
mind kept flexible, glancing to all points of natural interest.
But the lean hot spirits, such as mine, become hypnotised with
their bit occupations - if I may use Scotch to you - it is so far
more scornful than any English idiom. Well, I can't help being a
skeleton, and you are to take this devious passage for an apology.
I thought ALADDIN capital fun; but why, in fortune, did he pretend
it was moral at the end? The so-called nineteenth century, OU VA-
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