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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: down with untroubled vision what he saw of a certain phase of
work-a-day life. There was nothing brilliant nor fly-away about
him. He was not a genius. His heart never rode his head. He was
neither overlorded by sentiment nor hag-ridden by imagination.
Otherwise he might have been guilty of the beautiful exaggerations
in Melville's "Typee" or the imaginative orgies in the latter's
"Moby Dick." It was Dana's cool poise that saved him from being
spread-eagled and flogged when two of his mates were so treated;
it was his lack of abandon that prevented him from taking up
permanently with the sea, that prevented him from seeing more than
one poetical spot, and more than one romantic spot on all the
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