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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: and then led the way by a flight of steps beside the stable, to the
loft where the mountebank lay sick. If Doctor Desprez were to live
a thousand years, he would never forget his arrival in that room;
for not only was the scene picturesque, but the moment made a date
in his existence. We reckon our lives, I hardly know why, from the
date of our first sorry appearance in society, as if from a first
humiliation; for no actor can come upon the stage with a worse
grace. Not to go further back, which would be judged too curious,
there are subsequently many moving and decisive accidents in the
lives of all, which would make as logical a period as this of
birth. And here, for instance, Doctor Desprez, a man past forty,
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