The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: glow of the lanterns, these vain imaginations lost their
vividness, and finally vanished from the first ray of sunshine
that greeted our escape from the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Ere we had gone a mile beyond it I could well-nigh have taken my
oath that this whole gloomy passage was a dream.
At the end of the valley, as John Bunyan mentions, is a cavern,
where, in his days, dwelt two cruel giants, Pope and Pagan, who
had strown the ground about their residence with the bones of
slaughtered pilgrims. These vile old troglodytes are no longer
there; but into their deserted cave another terrible giant has
thrust himself, and makes it his business to seize upon honest
 Mosses From An Old Manse |