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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: stream of private talk, such as it would have shocked all decency
to speak loudly at the street-corners. It is very singular,
how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer
idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have
ever possessed while he was living and acting among them. Death
is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood, or betrays its
emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors
the baser metal. Could the departed, whoever he may be, return
in a week after his decease, he would almost invariably find
himself at a higher or lower point than he had formerly occupied,
on the scale of public appreciation. But the talk, or scandal, to
House of Seven Gables |
