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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: George gave signs, while at the village school, of future
scholarship; and when he was only fourteen, his uncle James sent him
to the University of Paris. Those were hard times; and the youths,
or rather boys, who meant to become scholars, had a cruel life of
it, cast desperately out on the wide world to beg and starve, either
into self-restraint and success, or into ruin of body and soul. And
a cruel life George had. Within two years he was down in a severe
illness, his uncle dead, his supplies stopped; and the boy of
sixteen got home, he does not tell how. Then he tried soldiering;
and was with Albany's French Auxiliaries at the ineffectual attack
on Wark Castle. Marching back through deep snow, he got a fresh
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