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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: enough for that little time? Shall you be hungry,--shall you
lack clothes, or a roof to shelter you,--between this point
and the grave? No! but, with the half of what you now possess,
you could revel in costly food and wines, and build a house twice
as splendid as you now inhabit, and make a far greater show to the
world,--and yet leave riches to your only son, to make him bless
the hour of your death! Then, why should you do this cruel,
cruel thing?--so mad a thing, that I know not whether to call it
wicked! Alas, Cousin Jaffrey, this hard and grasping spirit has
run in our blood these two hundred years. You are but doing
over again, in another shape, what your ancestor before you did,
House of Seven Gables |
