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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: is your merit? What are you proud of? You made a lucky guess;
and that is all that can be said."
"And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?--
I pity you.--I thought you cleverer--for, depend upon it a lucky
guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it.
And as to my poor word `success,' which you quarrel with, I do not
know that I am so entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn
two pretty pictures; but I think there may be a third--a something
between the do-nothing and the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston's
visits here, and given many little encouragements, and smoothed
many little matters, it might not have come to any thing after all.
Emma |
