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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: which the members of the club had caricatured themselves, their
associates, and their aims. There was a slick French audacity
about the workmanship of these men of toil unbending that went
straight to the heart of the beholder. And yet it was not
altogether French. A dry grimness of treatment, almost Dutch,
marked the difference. The men painted as they spoke--with
certainty. The club indulges in revelries which it calls
"jinks"--high and low, at intervals--and each of these gatherings
is faithfully portrayed in oils by hands that know their
business. In this club were no amateurs spoiling canvas, because
they fancied they could handle oils without knowledge of shadows
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