The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: was my first thought to drop from the wall upon the other side. A
glance sufficed to show me that even the way by which I had come
was now cut off, and the field behind me already occupied by a
couple of shepherds' assistants and a score or two of sheep. I
have named the talismans on which I habitually depend, but here was
a conjuncture in which both were wholly useless. The copestone of
a wall arrayed with broken bottles is no favourable rostrum; and I
might be as eloquent as Pitt, and as fascinating as Richelieu, and
neither the gardener nor the shepherd lads would care a halfpenny.
In short, there was no escape possible from my absurd position:
there I must continue to sit until one or other of my neighbours
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