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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: - if I had not been a professed buffoon, that is. These were the
only philosophical lives yet open: laughter or prayer; sneers, we
might say, and tears. Until the sun of the Positive arose, the
wise man had to make his choice between these two.'
'I have been a buffoon, of course,' observed Jean-Marie.
'I cannot imagine you to have excelled in your profession,' said
the Doctor, admiring the boy's gravity. 'Do you ever laugh?'
'Oh, yes,' replied the other. 'I laugh often. I am very fond of
jokes.'
'Singular being!' said Desprez. 'But I divagate (I perceive in a
thousand ways that I grow old). Franchard was at length destroyed
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