The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: how little Millet was content to live; or do they think, because
they have less genius, they stand excused from the display of equal
virtues? But upon one point there should be no dubiety: if a man
be not frugal, he has no business in the arts. If he be not
frugal, he steers directly for that last tragic scene of LE VIEUX
SALTIMBANQUE; if he be not frugal, he will find it hard to continue
to be honest. Some day, when the butcher is knocking at the door,
he may be tempted, he may be obliged, to turn out and sell a
slovenly piece of work. If the obligation shall have arisen
through no wantonness of his own, he is even to be commanded; for
words cannot describe how far more necessary it is that a man
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