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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so
remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring
name. The greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to
communicate its smallness also; and, while contemporaries
bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity with the news
that his periwig was once alive with nits. But this thought,
although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first nor
his deepest; it did not colour one word that he wrote; and
the Diary, for as long as he kept it, remained what it was
when he began, a private pleasure for himself. It was his
bosom secret; it added a zest to all his pleasures; he lived
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