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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her,
should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback,
and running about the country at the age of fourteen,
to books--or at least books of information--for, provided
that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained
from them, provided they were all story and no reflection,
she had never any objection to books at all. But from
fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine;
she read all such works as heroines must read to supply
their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable
and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.
Northanger Abbey |
