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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: ugly matter overwhelms the rare utterances of good men; the
sneering, the selfish, and the cowardly are scattered in
broad sheets on every table, while the antidote, in small
volumes, lies unread upon the shelf. I have spoken of the
American and the French, not because they are so much baser,
but so much more readable, than the English; their evil is
done more effectively, in America for the masses, in French
for the few that care to read; but with us as with them, the
duties of literature are daily neglected, truth daily
perverted and suppressed, and grave subjects daily degraded
in the treatment. The journalist is not reckoned an
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