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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: doubtless intended it to be. A susceptible observer, at any rate,
might have regarded it as affording very little evidence of the
general benignity of soul whereof it purported to be the outward
reflection. And if the observer chanced to be ill-natured, as well
as acute and susceptible, he would probably suspect that the smile
on the gentleman's face was a good deal akin to the shine on his
boots, and that each must have cost him and his boot-black,
respectively, a good deal of hard labor to bring out and
preserve them.
As the stranger entered the little shop, where the projection of
the second story and the thick foliage of the elm-tree, as well as
House of Seven Gables |
